Now I doubt Richard Branson has spent much of his adult life job seeking, but if he were to…….

Following on from my previous blog of January 2017 raising the question of how well we apply Emotional Intelligence as individuals during our job searches, a natural follow up question would be:

How can we engage ourselves more fully and intelligently with the process of applying for a new job? 

One of the comments received on my previous blog suggested that the key to this would be balancing practical knowledge with an emotionally intelligent outlook.  In other words, to engage more fully and intelligently, we must have both the relevant and pertinent information about the opportunity we are pursuing available to us, whilst also having a self-awareness of our emotions and feelings about the role.  It is this combination of cold hard facts and the ability to understand our own emotions that allows us to fully engage with a recruitment process and make the career decisions that are truly right for us.

Indeed Mind Tools, an on-line training solutions provider cover this nicely in their article Making the Right Career Move which offers a decision making framework that supports the value of weighing up career options Rationally (the facts) and Emotionally (your feelings). So how well do you do that when you’re looking for a role?  If you’re only thinking in that way at the point of being offered a new position then probably not very well.

This is because the entire recruitment process in itself, right from the point of first considering whether to put yourself forward and apply for a position through to the first day that you physically turn up for work in your new role, is an emotional and information laden journey.  If you aren’t using that process of application, interview and offer to it’s fullest, you aren’t positioning yourself to make the best decision that you can.  The recruitment process itself is an incredibly important journey that we should be squeezing every element of value out of.

To illustrate this point further, think of it from an alternative angle.  There are certain brands and entrepreneurial figures that are iconic in the business world as forward thinking and innovative. Richard Branson and Virgin would undoubtedly be described as such and Virgin Media as an organisation have identified the immense importance and value of the recruitment process. They have identified that the experience of applying for a job opportunity with them is so significant in terms of the information that is relayed and the emotion that it creates, that not only does it affect an individuals perception and commitment to the opportunity to work for the company, but also their subsequent customer loyalty to their brand. They are therefore not only looking at the recruitment process from a perspective of creating a great candidate experience, but actually taking that a step further and identifying that this experience can in itself create a huge revenue stream for the company.  Bryan Adams as CEO of digital marketing agency Ph. Creative offers some great insight into that concept in his article describing how his company supported Virgin Media with exploring that notion.

What this demonstrates is how impactive the candidate journey is.  It resonates beyond whether or not you get a job to how you feel about your own abilities, what other opportunities you pursue in the future and even your brand loyalty and personal spending profile.  There is so much going on at every stage of the process that being able to keep clarity over not only the facts and the details of the opportunity, but also understand your own emotions and thoughts about it is not an easy thing to achieve, but is an incredibly valuable thing to be able to.