Study: Hiring managers value people skills over smarts

OK, so who will managers hire?

Former BusinessWeek editor Kimberly Weisul wants to know. First we hear they won’t hire the unemployed, which seems discriminatory, given the high unemployment rate. 

Now a study by CareerBuilder.com finds that they won’t hire “dweebs.” Or at least that’s Weisul’s interpretation of the study.  CareerBuilder’s survey of some 2,600 hiring managers found 71 percent indicated emotional fortitude — the ability to control emotions and manage relationships — was more important than a worker's IQ.

CareerBuilder theorized that in a down economy, employers are more apt to look beyond the skills needed to do the job and consider a candidate’s “soft skills.” 

"The competitive job market allows employers to look more closely at the intangible qualities that pay dividends down the road — like skilled communicators and perceptive team players," Rosemary Haefner, vice president of HR at CareerBuilder, explains.

The survey also reported that 75 percent of hiring managers said when an employee is being considered for a promotion, the high IQ candidate will lose out to the person with higher emotional intelligence.

“Here’s the catch: Most companies do little, if anything, to measure either quality. When’s the last time you went to a job interview and were asked to take an IQ test? Emotional intelligence, for all the hoopla, is seldom comprehensively measured,” Weisul writes. “What these hiring managers are really saying, then, is that they don’t want people who conform to their stereotype of high-IQ workers.”

In other words, they don’t want super-smart people who get bogged down in the technicalities of their job and don’t bother to get along with their colleagues. 

What do you think of the survey results? Would you hire a “dweeb”?