Abstract:

Nowadays, the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) has become more and more important and popular, not only in various areas of behavioural research within the scientific community, but also in the commercial world (e.g., Zeidner, Matthews & Roberts, 2004). For example, the assessment of EI is thought to be useful in the work setting when evaluating ongoing functioning of employees at critical stages of their careers, e.g., at selection, training, and promotion phases. The method and selected preliminary findings will be presented of a three-year research project (founded by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo) whose main hypothesis is that EI has an important role for career starters, both when entering the work context (e.g., by facilitating them to fit their job role requirements), and more generally in their attempts to find a satisfactory job in line with their personal and professional aims. The general aim of the project is to develop, administer, and validate a set of EI assessment and training instruments specifically aimed at career starters – mostly University graduates, and people with a high school diploma and/or short professional degree - who have entered or seek to enter the work context. The specific aims of the project are twofold, both applicative and theoretical-methodological in nature. On the one hand, we plan (a) to study EI in career starters, analysing the (sociodemographic, personality, and education-related) variables hypothesised to interact with EI; on the other hand, we plan (b) to gain and provide a better conceptualisation, at both the theoretical and operational level, of the EI construct, especially by focusing on the distinction between trait-EI (Pérez, Petrides, & Furnham 2005) and ability-EI (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002). The project is partially based on a method developed within a recent Leonardo european project, involving hundreds young europeans, in the period 2004-2005, on the assessment and training of EI in career starters, and on its results (e.g., Kafetsios et al. 2009; Zammuner & Kafetsios 2005a, 2005b). According to the project aims, a set of EI assessment and training instruments has been constructed and participants fill in on-line both the EI tests and the training. This paper will report on the overall design of the project, the variables that are tested, the procedures used to implement the aim of giving access to the instruments to a large sample, and will present some illustrative results on aspects of emotional intelligence and competences and their relation to criterion and socio-demographic variables.

Keywords:

Emotional intelligence, career starters, test development, assesment, training.