What is emotional intelligence and how to assess it in candidates.
In today's fast-changing labour market, it is now common knowledge that technical skills are no longer enough. Companies in every industry are increasingly valuing qualities such as empathy, self-control, listening skills, and emotional management. All these aspects fall under one key skill:emotional intelligence.
Understanding whether a candidate or applicant possesses a good level of emotional intelligence, however, is far from simple. In this article we delve into what it is, why it really matters, and how to assess this soft skill in a structured and effective way.
Emotional intelligence is a skill, not an intuition
The term "emotional intelligence" refers to the ability to recognize, understand and manage one's own emotions and those of others. It is not a generic or innate endowment, but a real skill that can be observed, trained and evaluated. According to the most accepted models (such as Daniel Goleman's), emotional intelligence has five dimensions:
- self-knowledge
- emotional self-regulation
- intrinsic motivation
- empathy
- social and interpersonal skills
These components directly influence how a person works in a team, makes decisions under pressure, handles conflict or deals with change. For this reason, emotional intelligence is now considered one of the most relevant soft skills in recruitment, especially for managerial, customer-facing or high-interaction roles.
Difficulties in assessment during recruitment
Assessing emotional intelligence is not straightforward. It is not found on a CV, nor does it easily emerge from a standard application. Often, the tendency is to rely on the "general impression" the candidate or applicant conveys. But this route exposes one to the risk of bias, subjectivity and inconsistency.
In addition, emotional signals are subtle and contextual. A person may appear empathetic, but really only because he or she is skilled in verbal communication. Or she may appear very composed, but not because she handles emotions well under stress.
Therefore, it is important that recruiters be trained to recognize observable behavioral signals, use well-constructed situational questions, and adopt structured tools. Otherwise, there is a risk of excluding candidates with high potential or overestimating profiles that can "tell a good story."
How to integrate emotional evaluation into the recruitment process
To make the assessment of emotional intelligence more effective, it is useful to act on three levels:
- prepare targeted questions: ask to recount experiences in which the candidate dealt with a conflict, handled a critical situation, or helped a colleague in need. Answers should be analyzed in light of concrete behaviors;
- observe language and emotional coherence: listen not only to words, but to tone, posture, and the ability to relate. Signs of self-awareness and empathy emerge in the details;
- use structured assessment tools: simulated conversations, behavioral tests or digital tools can offer useful objective data to supplement human judgment.
This integration should be designed in a manner consistent with the role to be filled and the stage of the selective funnel. In some cases it is useful right from pre-recruitment, in others at the final qualitative assessment stage.
Skillvue: more room for emotional intelligence assessment
One of the main benefits of Skillvue's Skill Assessment Agents is the ability to standardize and automate the assessment of technical and soft skills, freeing up recruiters' time and attention to focus on analyzing a person's profile in its entirety and with objective data to support them in making the best possible decisions right from the pre-recruitment stage.
When competencies are tested objectively, comparably, and consistently with the role, recruiters can devote themselves tomore qualitative analysis of the candidate's or applicant'shuman potential , while also managing the interview phase in a more personalized and strategic manner.
Skillvue enables all this through fully digitized Skill Assessments and customized reports on each individual candidate, but it doesn't stop there. By partnering with psychometricians, AI experts, HR professionals, and universities, new competency tests can be tailored or skill assessments can be aligned with companies' internal models, making the assessment experience more coherent, effective, and truly adherent to the organization's culture and needs.
