Business Employee IQ and EQ Must Be in Balance for Employment

Business organizations will benefit overall from any trend to employ the smartest people possible but it is just one of many positive personality characteristics needed in any potential employee. The newest trend is for companies to look for potential employees that have many other factors to add to their organization.

Many of the older companies still classify a job by limiting factors. They feel that if they need a C++ programmer than that person must not only be able to program in C++ but have an extremely high IQ. This is based on flawed past thinking that relates IQ with a specific talent or skill.

IQ is a measure of intelligence. It is a way to rate how an individual measures on different types of abilities: verbal fluency, mathematical skills, spatial recognition, memory retention, and reasoning.

A potential employee should not be passed over for a position if the IQ of the candidate is the only determining factor. Categorization based solely on IQ would be a bad thing for any organization. Hiring a person with a high IQ for a specific job cannot determine their total potential "suitability" and "competence" for a position in the company. More interpersonal skills are also needed in the potential employee.

The emotional intelligence to successfully work within an organization needs to be a major factor. EQ is needed to optimally balance IQ in the workplace. EQ is a measure of ability to notice and then manage interior and exterior perceptions of feelings and then control individual reactions.

Hiring an employee that has a well developed EQ to complement their IQ would provide many increased benefits for any organization. It would create a higher potential of that new employee "fitting in" and being retained. The potential employee would "settle in" faster, become more productive sooner, and bond with the new organization quicker.

And now back to our hypothetical potential employee; our C++ programmer that applied for a job. While many C++ programmers are available for hire and applied with us, many did not have the interpersonal skills to get along with the other employees in our organization.

This candidate shows the combined talents that would be the most useful to our organization. He shows a tendency towards a high EQ during the interviews and the basic C++ skill sets we really needed. While we interviewed many potential candidates with better C++ skills and higher IQ's; they all had lower EQ's and that determined our decision as to who to employ.