{"id":27666,"date":"2018-11-16T11:16:44","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T16:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/?p=27666"},"modified":"2022-03-16T10:03:04","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T14:03:04","slug":"employers-test-for-emotional-intelligence-job-interviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/employers-test-for-emotional-intelligence-job-interviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Employers Could Test for Emotional Intelligence in Job Interviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jobs require soft, relationship skills — emotional intelligence or EQ — \u00a0as much as hard skills. <\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, as reported in <\/span>Forbes<\/span><\/a>, a study by the Carnegie Institute of Technology found that while only 15 percent of financial success was due to technical ability, 85 percent was due to skills in \u201chuman engineering,\u201d such as personality, communication, negotiation and leadership. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the hiring process, however, recruiters usually have just a few minutes to judge a candidate\u2019s emotional competencies. Many times, their judgments are inaccurate or incomplete.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But until now, there has never been a test based on scientific findings and empirical validations that measures emotional intelligence in the specific context of a workplace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no other instruments designed specifically for the workplace,\u201d said <\/span>Marcello Mortillaro<\/span><\/a>, a senior researcher in\u00a0<\/span>the University of Geneva\u2019s <\/span>Swiss Center for Affective Sciences<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know people that have different emotional behaviors at home and at the workplace. Some people are submissive and accommodating at work but very strict and directive at home, or the opposite<\/span>.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

To fill this gap, Mortillaro and <\/span>Katja Schlegel<\/span><\/a>, a researcher in the University of Bern\u2019s Institute of Psychology, have developed the <\/span>Geneva Emotional Competence Test<\/span><\/a> (GECo), which measures a person\u2019s capacity to understand, regulate, recognize and manage his or her own and other colleagues\u2019 emotions in a professional environment.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The aim was to assess a person’s level in this area and provide both individuals and organizations with a scientifically based description that could help in personal development, in hiring the right candidate for the job, and in giving the right job to the person,\u201d Mortillaro said in a statement. <\/span><\/p>\n

The study is published in the <\/span>Journal of Applied Psychology<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Measuring EQ<\/b><\/h2>\n

The questions in GECo are based on interviews with more than 40 managers working in Swiss-based firms.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe scenarios are realistic and meaningful across different professional contexts: everybody who is working in an organization where there are frequent interpersonal interactions — with colleagues, supervisors, assistants, but also customers and clients — can understand and relate to the scenarios,\u201d said Mortillaro. <\/span><\/p>\n

More than 1,000 participants aged 20-60, who work in diverse career fields in Switzerland or the U.S., took the GECo test, which consists of four tests, each evaluating the four parts of emotional intelligence: understanding emotions, recognising emotions, regulating one\u2019s own emotions, and managing other people\u2019s emotions. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the first part on understanding emotions, participants were presented with 20 emotional scenarios. Then, from 15 possible options, they were asked which emotions were probably experienced in each scenario. <\/span><\/p>\n

The second part on recognizing emotions consisted of 42 videos of a person expressing a particular emotion, and participants were given 14 suggestions and asked to select the right emotion.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the third part on regulating one\u2019s own emotions, participants were given 28 scenarios, each portraying a particular situation. Then, out of four possible options, they were asked to choose the best two ways of reducing the negative emotion rather than maintaining it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, the fourth part on managing other people\u2019s emotion consisted of 20 scenarios of a person expressing fear, sadness, anger or inappropriate happiness. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then, from five possible courses of actions — cooperation, compromise, acceptance, avoidance or assertiveness — the participants were asked to choose the most effective way to manage another person\u2019s emotional state. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>This was the most important and meaningful test, especially in a professional context,\u201d Mortillaro explained in a statement. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn this instance, context is everything. You might think that cooperation is always the right solution but that’s by no means the case.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The results<\/b><\/h2>\n

The researchers found that the more emotional intelligent a person is, the better his or her work outcomes are. In fact, emotional intelligence goes hand-in-hand with a higher degree of empathy, openness to others, respect for moral rules and, in overall terms, a positive temperament. <\/span><\/p>\n

“The GECo results were controlled and validated by additional tests, and they are very convincing,” Mortillaro said in a statement. “The more emotional intelligence skills you have and the better those skills are, the better your work outcomes are, above and beyond your cognitive intelligence or personality.”<\/span><\/p>\n

This applies to students as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We also noted that managers who perform well on GECo have better results in standardized leadership tasks and students with higher GECo scores get better grades,\u201d <\/span>Schlegel<\/span> said in a statement. <\/span><\/p>\n

They also found a link between emotional intelligence and a person’s well-being and satisfaction with his or her lifestyle, Schlegel continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, they found that a superior ability to regulate one\u2019s own emotion is linked to earning a slightly higher salary. <\/span><\/p>\n

Overall, when asked to interpret nonverbal emotional expressions, women obtained superior results than men, the researchers found.<\/span><\/p>\n

Skill of the future<\/b><\/h2>\n

As a lot of hard skills can now be done by computers, Mortillaro believes emotional intelligence is the skill of the future. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is where there is a clear human advantage and where experience and training make a significant difference,\u201d said Mortillaro. <\/span><\/p>\n

And emotional intelligence can be developed over time, according to Mortillaro.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe tested GECo on people aged 20 to 60, and the results show that emotional intelligence increases with age and experience, meaning it’s a faculty that can be improved and developed,” Mortillaro said in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now being marketed by a company in Bern, Switzerland, GECo is available for research purposes and commercial use, such as recruitment and career guidance assessments. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to use the GECo in several different domains, from the medical sector to the service industry, from education to sports,\u201d said Mortillaro. <\/span><\/p>\n

While the test currently exists in French, English and German, an Italian version is also being developed. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe now want to analyze the data to see whether there are differences across different language regions,\u201d Mortillaro said in a statement. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re continuing to develop GECo so that it can support the role of emotional intelligence in recruitment and scientifically validate the predictive aspect of a person’s abilities in their professional careers.” <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jobs require soft, relationship skills — emotional intelligence or EQ — \u00a0as much as hard skills. In fact, as reported in Forbes, a study by the Carnegie Institute of Technology found that while only 15 percent of financial success was due to technical ability, 85 percent was due to skills in \u201chuman engineering,\u201d such as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":27664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[661,667,235,602,601,230,615,229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ace-college","category-career-advice-ace-college","category-career-advice","category-career-advice-ace-your-career","category-internship-advice-ace-your-career","category-news","category-interview","category-lead-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/innocent-girl.jpg",830,533,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/innocent-girl-224x144.jpg",224,144,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/innocent-girl-300x193.jpg",300,193,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/innocent-girl.jpg",830,533,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/innocent-girl.jpg",830,533,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/innocent-girl.jpg",830,533,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/innocent-girl.jpg",830,533,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Hyeyeun Jeon","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/author\/hyeyeun-jeon\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Jobs require soft, relationship skills — emotional intelligence or EQ — \u00a0as much as hard skills. In fact, as reported in Forbes, a study by the Carnegie Institute of Technology found that while only 15 percent of financial success was due to technical ability, 85 percent was due to skills in \u201chuman engineering,\u201d such as…","featured_media_src_url":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/innocent-girl.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}