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Know Thyself: Emotional Intelligence and Your Viability as a Job Candidate.

June 8, 2010 | Author: Allyn Horne | Filed under: Job Hunting

All else being equal, a hiring manager juggling between two attractive candidates may very well choose the candidate with the higher EQ. EQ, or emotional quotient, is a measure of emotional intelligence (EI). EI, in turn, refers to your soft skills and the personal traits that influence your hire-ability. Key dimensions EI-savvy interviewers focus on—and on which you should therefore focus, too—include:

  1. Assertiveness. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: there’s a right way and a wrong way to follow-up on interviews. How you follow-up not only affects whether you get the job; it also helps the interviewer get a sense of your decision-making skills. Employers are like Goldilocks: they seek employees who are not too passive, not too aggressive, but assertive—just right!
  2. Self-awareness. Your emotional state affects your success as a job candidate, as emotion tends to bubble up during interviews or meetings with professional contacts. If an interviewer senses fear, anger, or desperation, they’ll understand that you lack self-awareness and, with it, the ability to predict and manage your feelings on the job. Conversely, if an interviewer, who knows from your resume that you’ve been out of work for months, sees, instead, a fount of enthusiasm and confidence, they’ll suppose that you are self-aware and that you have developed coping mechanisms—the kind that will support you in the workplace as well as they are supporting you in a difficult time now.
  3. Empathy. Can you adapt to the moods and emotions of those around you? If your interviewer seems stressed, or appears to be having a rough day, how do you react? Do you take it personally? Or, instead, do you empathize with the interviewer to show you’re adaptable, personable and someone who can be counted on for support? Expressing empathy can be as simple as responding to an interviewer’s remark about a “rough day” by saying, “Sorry you’re having a rough one; I know how days like that feel.” Often, a short, simple, sincere expression of empathy remains with the recipient long after the giver has gone.
  4. Problem-solving. Organizations love problem solvers. So show that you understand what the interviewer’s problems are, and that you can solve them. Don’t try to present yourself as “the” solution to a problem you don’t fully understand though; keep in mind that, if the interviewer is far-removed from business operations, his or her “problems” might not entirely match the true problems of the organization. To work around possible disconnects, build a case that shows the interviewer how hiring you could move the organization closer to the interviewer’s vision of “Problem, solved!”
  5. Happiness. You might also consider happiness a component of self-awareness, in that a deep inner happiness can keep you on an even keel when things go awry. Employers prefer to hire professionals whose happiness is not necessarily dependent on the fluctuations and uncertainties in their environments. So the next time you walk into an interview room, stand tall, smile wide, and make up your mind to be happy!

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. –Abraham Lincoln

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