Thoughs on recruiting postdocs and students (June 2025)

I recently (June 2025) completed recruiting a postdoc. This short video explains why I chose a particular person. The criteria that I looked into were: 1) Are you in the same community with me 2) Do you have ambitious publication agenda 3) Who trained you during your doctoral studies I also discuss the role of motivation letter and what gets your application to be immediately rejected. Two problems in motivation letters are that they are generic, not discussing the position being applied to and that they simply restate information from the CV in a different format. A good motivation letter is not about the applicant, but about the position that is being applied to and about the person who is doing the recruitment. Instead of explaining your qualifications, you shoud explain what the project or person wants to accomplish and how you can help with that.