Emotional Intelligence Tests: Potential Impacts on the Hiring Process for Accounting Students

Abstract

Emotional intelligence is increasingly recognized as being important for professional career success. Skills related to emotional intelligence (e.g. organizational commitment, public speaking, teamwork, and leadership) are considered essential. Human resource professionals have begun including tests of emotional intelligence (EI) in job applicant screening processes. Consequently, if accounting education fails to develop EI skills, students may seem to recruiters to be less qualified. Alternatively, if the tests for EI are inaccurate or easily manipulated, qualified applicants may be overlooked. We examine the ability of subjects studying accounting at a Canadian university to purposely alter their results on two of the most frequently used EI tests: the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). We find that subjects can purposely change their EI score to fit the job description. We conclude that neither instrument is clearly better than the other is in the hiring process and both require revision as potential applicants are able purposely to alter their scores.

Keywords:

• Emotional intelligence
• professional competencies
• accounting skills
• accounting education
• self-presentation

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of the editor, an associate editor and two anonymous referees. Funding for this project was provided by the Certified Management Accountants—Brock Accounting Research and Education Centre (CMA-BAREC), Brock University.

Notes

A detailed discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches is beyond the scope of this research but can be found in Zeidner et al. (2009).

Research study approved by the Brock University Research Ethics Board, file number 08–107-COOK

It might be suspected that these results simply represent regression toward the mean. However, if that were the only effect, it would have been observed in the second set of results for both the MSCEIT and the EQ-i. Thus, this change is not simply a regression toward the mean.

We are indebted to an anonymous referee for this observation.