| In order to reduce costs associated with employee turnover, organizations face an ever-growing challenge to effectively select the new hire who shows the best potential for a good employee job fit. By accomplishing this, managers hope to increase job performance and thus retain competitiveness in their field. Improved hiring techniques are needed, especially within the service sector, where individual interactions with others can play a key role in organizational success. It is common within the service sector for both cognitive and social skills to be important to worker success. Emotional intelligence may be related to cognitive and social aspects of job performance. However, such relationships need to be measured.; Archival data were utilized for the present study. A pilot study was conducted using 73 participant surveys, establishing adequate reliability scores for the EQ Index (EQI) of Rahim and others. A final sample was used (N = 129) to analyze correlations between the EQI and four components of job performance (cognitive, social, overall, and global). Results were obtained utilizing a Pearson's product-moment correlation, t test for dependent samples, multiple linear regression, principal component analysis, and principal axis factor analysis.; Emotional intelligence correlated both significantly and positively with all four components of job performance. However, after computing r2, only social job performance (r = .288) and global job performance (r = .292) met the criterion for a near medium effect size at the p < .05 level. Overall, in correlation with emotional intelligence, the combination of all four job performance measures accounted for 8.53% of the total variance. Supplemental analyses revealed significant findings, with factor analyses offering theoretical support for the EQI.; Within the present study, emotional intelligence correlated with both cognitive and social task performance, as measured by supervisor ratings. If hiring managers wish to enhance personnel selection, they would do well to consider including a measure of emotional intelligence. |
