Emotional Intelligence and Employment Seeking in Japanese University Women

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between employmentseeking and the three areas of emotional intelligence: intrapersonal, interpersonal and situationalabilities. A questionnaire study was conducted among 104 senior female universitystudents. The results revealed that the student group who had received employment offersfrom more than three companies showed the highest scores in all three areas of emotional intelligence.Particularly, a close connection with the employment seeking was found in the interpersonalability of emotional intelligence. The students who received employment offer (s) showed significantly higher scores in all three areas as compared to the students whoreceived none. These results suggested that emotional intelligence plays an important rolein successful employment seeking among university women and that training to develop theemotional intelligence would be recommended as a part of career education programs. There is another angle to consider: namely the findings suggest that adopting the emotionalintelligence scale for employment examination is useful for most of the companies in Japan.