Research related to the characteristics that are sought by recruiters and prospective employers in graduating college students suggests that emotional intelligence (El) skills are as important as, if not more important than, job-related skills. Counselors working with college students, however, usually focus on career management and job search skills and neglect the development of El skills. El seems to be an excellent framework to use in helping college students find a job and succeed in the workplace. By using the Confluence Counseling model, counselors working with college students can effectively combine career counseling with personal counseling in a holistic manner.....More than ever, college graduates must have a wider array of skills and knowledge to become successful employees and citizens. Although job-related knowledge is critical, today's college students need other skills to succeed in the workplace.Research (e.g., Goleman, 1998;LaPlante, 1991;Shivpuri & Kim, 2004) suggests that many students finish college only to find that they are ill prepared for dealing with many aspects of their personal and working lives.Many colleges and universities are now interested in educating students using a broad, holistic approach that combines "hard" job-related knowledge and skills with "soft" social skills (Shivpuri & I m , 2004;Wolf-Wendel & Ruel, 1999). Colleges and universities are increasingly concerned about the skill gaps in students who are looking for employment upon graduation. To verify this notion, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) recently surveyed a 0 randomly selected college recruiters to identify the most important performance dimensions currently being sought by prospective employers. The surveyed employers rated interpersonal skills as the most important skills they desired in recent college graduates, followed by ethics and integrity, leadership, perseverance, and knowledge (Shivpuri & IGm, 2004). The interesting finding of the NACE survey was that the first four most sought-after dimensions were "soft" career skills.The theory of emotional intelligence (EI) can provide a valuable framework for career counselors in higher education settings to use to help students be more successful in the workplace upon graduation. The career counseling literature, however, has greatly ignored the connection between EI and success for new college graduates. The purpose of this article is to discuss EI and its impact on a person's career, explore the increasing need for career counselors to be prepared to help college students enhance their EI skills, and explore a model for successfully integrating personal and career counseling by focusing on both career management skills and EI skills.
EITHEORYCareer counselors in higher education must first understand what EI is before they can help students learn more effective EI skills. Goleman (1995) described EI as a set John J. Liptak, Experiential Learning and Career Development, Radford University Correspon-dence concerning this article should...