How to Hire Emotionally Intelligent People: Lap of Love Spotlight

It’s said that there are nine categories of intelligence. This means that while some individuals might excel in the structured world of mathematics, others will master more physical tasks, and so on.

When it comes to recruiting people with certain forms of intelligence, one type of intelligence isn’t easy to identify from screening a CV – and that’s emotional intelligence.

People with high levels of emotional intelligence excel at interaction, understanding, and connection – and it’s a crucial skill for customer-facing roles dealing with particularly difficult situations – such as death and bereavement support.

In this article, we share how ThriveMap has been working with Lap of Love, a specialist in providing compassionate end-of-life care for pets, to develop a custom pre-hire assessment to help them to select the best-fit candidates for a job that requires exceptional levels of emotional intelligence.

Pet loss support: Lap of Love requirements

Lap of Love relies on its Veterinary Care Coordinators to provide vital phone support for families seeking information about pet euthanasia services and pet bereavement support. It’s a remote role that entails shift work.

Recognizing that this job is not be suitable for everyone, and with the goal of improving retention, Lap of Love reached out to ThriveMap to support the implementation of a pre-hire assessment process to ensure that the most resilient and skilled candidates are selected.

The process

When designing a pre-hire assessment, ThriveMap recommends defining what success looks like, analysing the realities of the role, an internal workshop, and designing an ideal candidate profile, before even designing the workflow or building the assessment. This approach ensures the qualities necessary for success in this role are identified and alignment among the key business stakeholders.

After undertaking this process, core competencies such as compassionate communication, emotional recognition and response, and maintaining composure in emotionally charged situations were identified as top priorities.

Additionally, as the role was home-based, a minimum internet connectivity threshold needed to be met in order to pass the recruitment process.

Designing and building the Realistic Job Assessment

With the Ideal Candidate profile as a foundation, ThriveMap’s team proceeded to create a Realistic Job Assessment. The design aimed to identify candidates whose qualities aligned with the specific skill set required.

Once built, ThriveMap’s custom pre-hire assessment seamlessly integrated into Lap of Love’s existing workflow, utilizing an API that harmonized with Workable’s Applicant Tracking System.

The assessment guided candidates through a series of questions mirroring a typical ‘day-in-the-life’. It explored aspects such as shift patterns and presented sample audio files challenging candidates to recognize and respond to customer emotions.

Importantly, candidates had the autonomy to self-opt out at any stage of the recruitment process if the role did not resonate with their career aspirations.

The results:

Megan Weich, Training Manager at Lap of Love said:

“Lap of Love successfully processed 4,000 assessments through Workable, thanks to ThriveMap’s pre-hire assessment featuring a ‘self-opt out’ component. This crucial addition ensures that Lap of Love is now able to identify and hire candidates who are the perfect fit for their respective roles. The insightful data derived from the reports has significantly benefited Lap of Love’s recruiting, training, and leadership teams in their efforts to hire top-notch Veterinary Care Coordinators.”

Need to recruit a team with a specific skillset?

ThriveMap’s tailored pre-hire assessments address the specific needs of an organization and assist in selecting individuals with the right qualities and characteristics.

For more information about ThriveMap’s pre-hire assessments, you can request a demonstration here.