Chapter 7. How to Hire Emotionally Intelligent IT Professionals

In this chapter, we will cover:

• The best practices to attract the best IT professionals to an open position
• The best hiring practices for IT talent
• The rules to follow before and during an interview to have the best outcome
• Preparing the interview and maintaining a legal hire process
• Master the behavioral and situational interview process to screen for emotional intelligence in all the candidates and especially in leadership roles, management, sales teams, and customer service

Nowadays, tech companies, when searching for the best fit for their companies, are looking for IT professionals that have not only the best technical skills but also display emotional intelligence skills, as opposed to the school they went to or their grades. Why? Well, because it's proven that emotional intelligence makes the difference when being successful. A candidate with low emotional intelligence lacks the skills to understand and manage their own emotions...

Best practices to attract the best IT professional fit for a position

I cannot think of a case where an IT position is filled with a just find anybody mentality. More often the phrase find the best fit we can afford is either stated or implied. As in any area of life, there is a lot to be learned from those that do the best job in finding and placing talented individuals. I enjoy working with teams filled with the best fits for that team. Therefore, I want to offer some suggestions for improving the odds at finding that best fit. Better still, suggestions for getting them to accept an offer:

• Know what you need and make that clear: People working in IT have many ways to be contacted. Even worse, anyone with a good reputation will be contacted via all those methods on a regular basis. This makes reading or listening to position descriptions an exercise in determining whether it is worth the time. The candidate may review the posting thoroughly, but will often skim it first. A position description...

Best hiring practices for IT

Ever wonder how employers select a perfect match for a job? Their secret lies in these four hiring practices: behavioral interviewing plus situational interviewing, selection assessments, job tryouts, and background screening. We will see more on these topics in the following sections:

Behavioral and situational interviewing

One of the most accurate hiring techniques which is ideal for evaluating skills and competencies necessary for effective job performance is to use behavioral, situational interviewing questions and some standard interview questions.

Behavioral interviewing, as opposed to traditional interviewing, evaluates candidates' past performance by having job candidates describe specific stories, examples, experiences, and results that indicate their ability to perform certain job tasks and responsibilities. Typically, a candidate is asked to provide a description of the situation, task, action, and result in response. Examples of behavioral interview...

The rules for a better interview outcome

Candidates are not the only ones stressed by interviews. The process can be stressful for employers too--especially if you are new to recruiting or conduct interviews infrequently. Good interviewing starts with a clear vision of the role you need to fill. It also requires having an awareness of how to influence the process in a constructive, stress-free way.

Here are the five golden rules to get better interview outcomes:

• Get clarity about the role and the questions you want to ask: First develop a job description and candidate profile, then use it to write the interview questions. You can refer back to your candidate and job profiles if you need clarification during the interview.
• Use a consistent interview process for everyone: If you're feeling frazzled planning your interview, create a structure where you use the same questions and ratings for every job candidate. Using a consistent interview process turns a nervous interviewer into a confident one...

Assessing emotional intelligence traits in candidates

Looking for emotional intelligence traits in job candidates during the interview process is not difficult--especially if you have the right questions to ask. In this section, we will start with general questions that you can use with all candidates. Then we will cover specific questions to specific job positions, where emotional intelligence is of the utmost importance.

The most effective questions to spot emotional intelligence in a candidate are:

• If you had the chance to have dinner with one of your role models or someone that inspires you, who would that be and why?
  • The answers give you a sneak peek into what are the candidate's passions and inspirations. And even the behavioral patterns the candidate respects.

• Imagine you have the chance to start tomorrow your own company. What would be the three core values?
  • The candidate's answer gives you the insight into his core values and priorities.
• As the team leader of your team, how would you...

Assessing emotional intelligence in leadership candidates

Nowadays, as emotional intelligence skills are so important in a leadership position, we can find several reliable emotional intelligence tests to assess the level of emotional intelligence of your leader.

However, during the interview process, there is a batch of specific questions that you can ask your candidate with the aim of spotting the traits that are more important for your organization. Even if your organization provides you with the results of a previous emotional intelligence test from the candidate, you should make your own evaluation during the interview. Adding your own evaluation to the data received from your industrial psychologist can help you further interpret their reports. To identify candidates with high emotional intelligence and eliminate those who could leave collateral damage in their wake, my advice is that you spend at least 30 percent of your interview time focusing on questioning to identify four competencies...

Assessing emotionally intelligent management candidates

There is been a lot of talk lately about a lack of management skills brought on by the exodus of the Baby Boomers from the workplace, coupled with many Millennial's lack of experience and soft skills. To help close the leadership gap, experts in the human resources and hiring areas were asked to share how they discern a job candidate's willingness and potential to develop management and leadership skills in the interview process.

Here are insights from the experts to identify a job candidate's leadership and management potential:

• Before you start your search, know what leadership and management look like in the organization: To spot potential leaders and managers, first define what skills and capabilities good leaders have. Without those standards, each individual making hiring decisions will apply their own beliefs. Have a framework to evaluate internal and external talent for effective leadership. Your organization needs to agree about...

Assessing emotionally intelligent sales people

There comes a point where your business cannot grow without a team of great salespeople. A solid sales team serves as cheerleaders for your product or service and keeps your client pipeline moving. Great sales teams are collaborators who see opportunities to improve the business - not just land another deal. The best salespeople at fast-growing organizations are doing a lot of internal collaboration with marketing or finance. They are being asked to contribute to R&D and product development. The best salespeople are collaborators.

Here is how to hire a sales team that rocks:

• Screen for skills that your stars demonstrate: If you already have top sales performers at your organization, use an assessment tool to identify what makes them successful and then hire for those traits. Most organizations have some type of profile or assessment that creates a standard relative to what's needed to succeed. A lot of good sales organizations are trying to...

Assess emotional intelligent customer service candidates

Providing excellent customer service is critical to business survival in today's competitive marketplaces. Mediocre customer service can quickly torpedo your company's reputation.

Research says 42 percent of people encounter poor customer service at least monthly and that can hurt a growing business's reputation. And in today's connected online world, great customer service, regardless of the industry, is essential. Good customer service skills are valuable for employees in all positions and industries, even those who don't work directly with customers.

Let's look at what are the most important emotional intelligence skills to look for in a customer service candidate:

• Communication skills: This one is easy to spot. The best salespeople have great communication skills. They use active emotional listening to try to understand the customers' personality and needs--to hear the intent behind what is being said. They share useful information...

Summary

In this chapter, we covered the best practices to attract the best IT fit to an open position, the best hiring practices for IT talent, and the rules to follow before and during an interview to have the best outcome. We also covered how to prepare for the interview and maintain a legal hire process, and how to master the behavioral and situational interview process to screen for emotional intelligence in all the candidates, especially in leadership roles, management, sales teams, and customer service.

You have learned that the best practices to attract the a good fit of a candidate to IT are: know what you need and make that clear to your candidate in the job description, use all the resources, speak IT to IT people, know your people, and understand the position's requirements.

You have learned that the best four practices to hire the best IT professional, with a lower turnover, are behavioral interviewing and situational interviewing, selection assessments, job tryouts, and background...