Pre-Employment
Emotional Intelligence Test

Build high-performing teams and recruit natural leaders

Most company objectives are achieved through teamwork, and research shows that emotional intelligence plays a crucial role. TalentMesh's emotional intelligence test lets you find team players and natural leaders in just 8 minutes.

The basics, briefly

What is an emotional intelligence test?

An emotional intelligence test is designed to measure the ability to which an individual can recognize, understand and work with own as well as other people's emotions. An emotional intelligence test is also referred to as an EQ test, and in certain settings it can be a better predictor of success than IQ.

High-EQ team
Average team

High EQ teams generally perform better.

What is an emotional intelligence test for recruitment?

An emotional intelligence test for recruitment is focused on measuring the emotional intelligence required to succeed at the work place. Generally it can be broken down into emotional awareness & control and the use & communication of emotions in a workplace setting. These will affect both the ability to perform in a team and the ability to lead other people. Applicants with high emotional intelligence will generally be better at building relationships, reducing team stress, defusing conflict, and many other workplace related skills.

The TalentMesh test

TalentMesh's pre-employment emotional intelligence test is built to drive workplace performance

Leader performance

Assess the ability to lead based on the emotional intelligence that is critical for effective leaders. This includes the ability to understand and listen to the emotional needs of team members, while maintaining composure in stressful situations.

Team performance

Evaluate an applicant's ability to work effectively in teams to achieve common goals. Measure the ability to understand other team members' emotions, and to use emotions to motivate team members to overcome difficult situations.

Individual performance

Measure the ability to understand own emotions, and ensure higher individual performance by hiring applicants with high emotional intelligence. Performance is linked to job satisfaction, and research shows that higher EQ leads to higher job satisfaction.

We measure the emotional intelligence characteristics that matter

Emotional awareness
Appraisal of others' emotions81
Appraisal of own emotions74
Emotional control
Regulation of own emotions55
Regulation of others' emotions69
Communication of emotions
Verbal expression of emotion84
Non-verbal expression of emotion80
Use of emotions
Emotion-based decision-making82
Use of emotion88

A sample applicant's scores across the four emotional intelligence characteristic groups.

We break it into expected behaviours in just 8 minutes

Emotional intelligence is one of the strongest predictors of workplace performance. That's why we break the emotional intelligence characteristic into more than 30 traits and expected behaviours. This allows you to get a very detailed understanding of an applicant's emotional intelligence, that you can use for the job interview, selection and onboarding. The test takes only 8 minutes to complete.

Appraisal of others' emotions81
Expected behaviour
  • Knows when people are lying
  • Predicts the actions of others
  • Reads body language and facial expressions
  • Reads the thoughts, emotions, moods, and motives of others
  • Understands the reasons for other people's emotions

Expected behaviour for an applicant, who scored high on the "Appraisal of others' emotions" trait.

Getting started

Administering it is as easy as one, two & three.

1Tell us who you’re looking to hire
2Customize the recommended test suite
3Invite your candidates

Are you ready to hire top performers, every single time?

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FAQ

A structured and reliable way to test emotional intelligence is to administer an emotional intelligence test. However, it is important that the emotional intelligence test has been validated by a psychologist and is documented to be reliable.

We don't recommend to try and test emotional intelligence as part of a job interview. We recommend to administer an emotional intelligence test ahead of the interview. This ensures that all applicants can be tested on a fair basis, and you can use the results to prepare for the interview. This also frees up time to focus on other aspects, like testing job-relevant skills or culture fit.

A study by CareerBuilder has shown that 71% of companies prefer emotional intelligence over IQ, and 59% would not hire an applicant with high IQ, but low emotional intelligence. This is because emotional intelligence is critical for performing in a team setting and to lead others. Hence, companies hire for emotional intelligence to increase the performance of their workforce.

According to Harvard Business Review, emotional intelligence (also known as EQ), accounts for around 90% of what sets higher performers apart from average and low performers, when they have similar technical skills. EQ can outperform measures like IQ or technical skills, as a high EQ helps foster strong relationships, effective communication, and conflict resolution, which is critical to succeed in the modern workplace.

EQ is an abbreviation for emotional quotient, which essentially just means emotional intelligence. Hence, an EQ test is simply an emotional intelligence test.

Multiple studies have confirmed a high emotional intelligence is one of the defining characteristics for high performing employees and leaders. Hence, an emotional intelligence test can be an accurate predictor of workplace performance. However, the tests must have been validated by a psychologist and shown to be reliable.

Emotional intelligence test is just one piece of the hiring puzzle.
To find your perfect match, take advantage of our full suite of quality pre-employment tests.