Airport Test

EcoGeoFemme has a recent post on whether, and how much, cultural fit is taken into consideration when hiring new lab members. This reminded me of the "airport test", which I first heard about a few years ago when I was applying for non-science non-academic jobs.

Many hiring managers use the “airport test” as their primary screen. They think, “If we were stuck in an airport together for six hours, would I be able to stand this person.”

This test can easily be applied to academic science--"If we were stuck in lab together for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and 50 weeks a year for 4-6 years, would I be able to stand this person?" Some labs don't care about fit at all with regard to hiring, some labs consider no open hostilities in lab to be a good enough fit, and for some labs, fit is as important a hiring criterion as scientific talent.

Generally speaking, if your interview consists of a formal presentation and a meeting with only the PI, chances are this lab doesn't place a lot of emphasis on fit. Several of my postdoc interviews were like that, and I had to specifically ask to meet with other people in the lab. If you are scheduled to meet with lab members other than the PI, you should assume that they will be evaluating you, and that some component of that evaluation is whether they think you're a good fit. And if your interview schedule includes one-on-one meetings with multiple grad students and postdocs, plus lunch and dinner group meetings with the rest of the lab, that is a friggin' burning bush telling you that this lab considers fit to be very important.

My lab falls in that last category, and I have to say I personally think fit is incredibly important (which is, of course, one of the reasons I chose to join this lab). I've heard from other people in our department that we are known as "the happy lab". Well, we didn't manage to find 20 people who all largely get along with each other by accident. We select for people who would fit in well in our lab, and this applies to technicians, grad students, postdocs, and even undergrads working part-time in the lab. This may seem overzealous, but it really only takes one person who doesn't fit to increase tension in the lab (we know this because hiring processes are not perfect), so we try to spot the ones who aren't good fits and keep them out of the lab. And in doing so, we maintain a population of people who share the belief that fit is important, so this emphasis on, and selection for, fit becomes self-perpetuating.

Assessing applicants for fit is not just about whether an applicant would make a good drinking buddy or someone to hang out with, although those would certainly be pluses. It's really about whether an applicant would make a good labmate. For example, our lab has a lot of assertive and outspoken people, so someone who is very shy or timid might become marginalized. We are very collaborative within the lab--there are many joint experiments and everyone shares their reagents--so someone who is territorial or wants to work alone would not be a good fit. Everyone is expected to contribute intellectually to all the other projects in the lab by critiquing experiments and making suggestions, so an applicant who doesn't ask good questions about everyone's projects just won't cut it. Obviously, you can't learn everything there is to know about an applicant during an interview, but you can often get a pretty good feel for whether the applicant is "right" for the lab.

There's no magical formula for successfully navigating a fit interview--you can't always predict what a particular lab would consider a good fit, and in any case, you're not likely to totally hit it off with every single person in a lab. I know it's trite, but the best course of action is really to just be yourself, be nice, and see what happens. Don't kiss ass and for god's sake, don't assume you can dismiss the junior grad students because they couldn't possibly have enough power to derail your application. You'd think this would be obvious, but our lab has dinged applicants for either agreeing with everything everyone said (people who can't think for themselves don't make good labmates) or for being disrespectful to junior members of the lab.

The bottom line is that if you're not a good fit with a particular lab, you might not want to go there even if you do get an offer because you may not be happy there. Different labs have different cultures and personalities, and I think it's well worth going on a few extra interviews to find the lab that suits you rather than trying to force a fit with one that doesn't.