Successful job candidates aren’t necessarily the smartest or most confident people in the room, Ilana Wisby tells Julie Gould in the first episode of a six-part weekly podcast series about hiring in science.

Wisby, a physicist and former chief executive of Oxford Quantum Circuits, which builds quantum computers from its base in Reading, UK, says recruiters use interviews to gauge a candidate’s values, their emotional intelligence, and their growth potential. Asking someone how they received difficult feedback, she adds, is a test of their humility and willingness to admit mistakes, and what they learned from them.

The episode begins with Linda Nordling, a freelance science writer who led coverage of Nature’s 2024 global hiring in science survey, talking about some of the surprising things that caught her eye in the data.

Future episodes include insights from a careers coach about industry hiring trends, and how an academic research institute based in London is centralizing its postdoc hiring process.

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