In Hiring, Emotions - Friend or Foe?

For data driven thinkers, emotions friend or foe seems obvious to be foe. Some leaders will turn away from candidates who are emotional people and seek to have a rational office environment.

Some are gut feeling hiring managers. Their track record will not be very consistent. We defy them to have the 95% good hires we achieve.

Amazingly, some are both against emotion and use gut feel in hiring.

So how should we view feelings?  SHI Group stands for making hiring decisions on verifiable data. Do we see emotions as our foe?

Far from it. Especially in China. China is a deep feeling country that teaches poetry to its children. We lose too much of who they are if we ignore and refuse how they feel or express.

We see that what we feel is invaluable in recruiting. A feeling is a sign that something may be right or that something is wrong. We note this feeling during the interview and then use it to go background check to verify. Feelings help point us to places to check. We see emotion as a valuable friend. See also Emotional Intelligence Versus Emotional Maturity in China.

This is a good way to view their place. On who we recommend, we definitely do not turn from emotional people or rational people. We see each type has a different way of accomplishing the same thing. On rare occasions, one kind of personality may have a distinct advantage over another. The other day, I ran across a person who worked in marketing and had a distinct promoter personality. She can grasp the marketing so quickly just because or her base personality. However, someone with more experience may be able to do the work as well as her if another kind of person is needed.

Are Emotions Friend or Foe or Both?

Some customers will specify a certain personality type, and we can find them. Emotional sense will help us along with our thinking in doing that. From the picture above, you can see that culture has little to do with emotions. Every culture blushes when embarrassed and gets cold when depressed as well all the others. Emotions may be the most cross cultural while language and thinking are different. In humans the emotions are not wisely discounted, and also not wisely totally trusted.

So let us make a place for emotion in our businesses and let us not let emotion secretly take over our hiring.