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way some applicants worry. A paper in Nature, Science or Cell is not essential to get an interview. Instead, our search committees look for evidence of success as a leader of a project in different environments (e.g. the PhD and postdoc labs) — a few fi rst-author publications that push a fi eld forward in journals of reasonable reputation and outstanding letters of recommendation from multiple mentors. We are looking for applicants who can develop a good project and successfully compete for external grants once they become independent. The area of research is very important: some committees look to add hot new areas of research to a department’s current portfolio, others add to the current strengths to build a critical mass in the area, and yet others focus on match with institutional strategic plans. After these semi-objective screens, there are still 10–20 applicants who are comparable with each other and of interest to the department. This is when slight differences in letters of recommendation (or phone conversations with referees) and diversity requirements become important for determining a slightly subjective list of interviewees. At the interviews, the personality of the applicant matters signifi cantly — is s/he a good speaker, intelligent, interactive, excited about the work and a potentially good colleague? Can s/he defend his/ her ideas well? How does the applicant deal with new suggestions? These are all the same considerations as when interviewing for any job that requires high cognitive skills.