The key of success is to choose the right people for your team. That’s what everybody will tell you. But if you ask “how?”, things will get a little more complicated. Practitioners admit that this is a tough problem, and you cannot expect to win all the time. Google attempted to answer the question with the so-called Project Aristotle. After sifting a huge amount of data through the best algorithms, they concluded that you can ignore gender, age, culture, education and pretty much everything else... What makes a good team is not good people, it is good interactions.

This is great news, but it does not really answer the question of how to choose the right people for your team. How does one know that a candidate will nicely interact with the team? Those were the questions I had in mind when I had to assemble my scientific team. Like almost everyone, I did not have any kind of training in this regard and I was not really prepared. So I sought advice from everybody who would care to give me their opinion, may they be colleagues, friends or family members. In the process, I did...

In my first years as a group leader, I had the chance to interview PhD candidates in panels at international calls for students. I quickly stopped interviewing students, but back then I was very surprised that the top candidates often proved less productive than those we had ranked mediocre. How was this possible at all? Panels are unbiased, they combine multiple expertises, they allow for critical discussion, so they should be able to pick the best candidates... right?

It turns out to be less surprising than I thought. Now a little more familiar with the dangers of panel interviews, I decided to see what our colleagues from the academia have to say about it. This is of course where I should have started before interviewing PhD students, but better late than never. If you haven’t met them, let me introduce you to the flaws of the mighty recruitment panel interview...

1. The unproved efficiency of panels

A good place to start. Despite forty years of research, the benefit of recruitment panels over single evaluators is still debated. According to a review published in 2009

Findings to date suggest that panel interviews might not necessarily provide the psychometric...