Question 2: How do you dramatically increase annual sales—one sales associate at a time?

The answer to both questions is to incorporate emotional intelligence into your employee selection criteria.

The bottom-line impact of hiring for emotional intelligence (EQ)—a person’s skill at recognizing and managing his or her own emotions and the emotions of others—is hard to argue. The United States Air Force dramatically reduced their annual recruiter turnover rate from 35% to 5%, which translated into a savings of $3 million a year when they selected candidates who were high in emotional intelligence. L’Oréal increased sales by $91,370 for every salesperson they hired specifically for his or her EQ skills. Not to mention, the cosmetic giant also earned a 63% lower turnover rate on the salespeople hired for their EQ compared to those who weren’t.

Selecting and Retaining the Best Talent

Getting the right people inside your organization is more important than ever. When employees leave, the company pays heavily. Losses in productivity combined with the increased costs of recruiting and selecting new hires packs an especially potent punch to businesses already feeling the pinch of an economic downturn.

Hiring for EQ can be the great neutralizer of today’s free-agent job market. People with solid EQ skills simply stick around longer and perform better. They are more able to weather the inevitable storms that arise on the job.  They are better able to deal with the difficult people and circumstances they will face. In contrast, people with low EQ skills struggle to build good working relationships and taint the working environment for their co-workers. Ultimately, they make the workplace less desirable and less productive.

When screening for EQ in the interview, the goal of the interviewer is to “spot the EQ Problem People.” Because emotional intelligence can be learned, the difference between a “good EQ candidate” and a “great EQ candidate” is a manageable one. But hiring a candidate with low EQ is like welcoming a lethal virus into your organization.

Use a self-reported emotional intelligence test score to select candidates and you’ll risk misleading results, in addition to a lawsuit. Ask any labor lawyer; he or she will tell you that the use of EQ test scores for selection is a practice that’s highly vulnerable to lawsuits based on good intentions, but failure to uphold the American Disability Act.