24 Jul Emotional Intelligence in Recruitment

Attracting new employees is largely based on emotional intelligence, which has a big impact on behaviours, decisions and relationships with others. It is essential to always remember the emotional aspect of the candidate experience when interviewing and in general when managing a hiring process.

To remark the importance of the emotional sphere there has been a significant transformation in the recruitment landscape, moving away from the traditional ‘question and answer’ style toward a more engaging, interactive, considerate, and productive approach. This EI approach encourages meaningful conversations, empathy, and authenticity.

Why it is important that your recruitment partner possesses EI skills:

• Their empathy and ability to communicate effectively will help manage the candidates’ emotions who will more likely feel comfortable with the hiring process and this will start creating a positive brand awareness. Candidate levels of involvement are affected by emotions, which in turn affects the success of hiring. When candidates are at ease, their genuine personalities shine through. They feel less scrutinized and valued, enabling a more sincere and insightful exchange.
• Understanding and managing feelings in hiring not only improves the application experience but also builds a stronger bond between applicants and companies, making talent acquisition strategies more effective.
• Emotional Intelligence enables recruiters to establish deeper connections with candidates, moving beyond simply evaluating skills and qualifications to identifying individuals who resonate with the company’s culture and values.
• With a solid moral foundation, recruiters can make choices that uphold integrity and fairness for all parties involved balancing the interests of the company and the candidate in the recruitment process.

The recruitment landscape is dynamic, with recruitment trends and requirements evolving constantly. Recruiters with high EI are adaptable and open to change. They can swiftly adjust their strategies and approaches to meet new challenges and satisfy the emerging needs of the organization, its market of reference and their pool of talents.

When talking about recruitment we often hear mentioning the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is clear from what mentioned above that human intelligence and care need to remain. AI can speed up processes, find patterns, and do repeated jobs quickly and well, but fairness, honesty, and moral behaviour still need to be overseen by humans.

Recruiters with high emotional intelligence have the skills that combined with experience – and eventually AI – can make the difference in understanding individual motivations, build bridges between candidates and companies especially in terms of culture and values, and mostly, are able to make difficult choices when supporting your organization. In other words, the human touch makes sure that candidates have a fair and unique experience.

Does your hiring partner possess emotional intelligence skills?

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