Home Health & Hospice Week

The past will help indicate the future.

Deciding to make emotional intelligence important when hiring new staff is great, but how do you actually do it?

The American Academy of Professional Coders’ Brian Ingles recommends asking “behaviorbased questions that will identify the emotional qualities and intelligence a candidate possesses” — that is, questions about how the candidate acted in the past when faced with a particular challenge.

Along those lines, here are some ideas for interview questions and follow-up questions from Tom Gimbel, founder & CEO of LaSalle Network, a staffing firm in Chicago:

Ask candidates to tell you about a time they failed. Emotionally intelligent people “are forthright and willing to share how they messed up,” writes Gimbel in a recent blog post for The Wall Street Journal.

They work well in teams because they can admit when they’ve failed and learn from their mistakes.

Ask follow-up questions that prompt candidates to reflect on lessons they’ve learned and how they’ve changed their behaviors. “People with EQ reflect on every situation and consider the impact it had on everyone involved,” Gimbel notes. “Whether it’s an hour later or during their commute home, they replay something that happened during the day in their head and think through how it could have gone differently.”

This reflection improves their performance and career growth over time.

Ask candidates to describe a time when they led others. People with high EQ relate to all kinds of personalities, says Gimbel. Because they make people feel understood and appreciated, they are natural leaders and enjoy the challenges of leadership more than folks with lower EQs.

Ask questions that elaborate on the “hows” behind the “whats.” People with high EQ think

about the processes that led to results, how people felt, and what factors helped a group reach collective goals, Gimbel notes.

If the candidate has any experience as a supervisor, ask how they resolved a personnel issue. If they’ve been in a customer service role, ask them to tell you how they handled a difficult customer. Self-aware people with high EQs “have the ability to remove any personal preference when helping coworkers through an argument or dealing with a hostile client,” Gimbel concludes.

Note: Gimbel’s blog post is at http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2017/03/12/how-to-tell-if-a-potentialhire-has-emotional-intelligence.