Charisma vs. credentials in academic hiring While it's clear that having a sterling CV with lots of high profile papers will be beneficial to getting hired, I often hear from other faculty that, when hiring, they are looking for someone who "fits in", "could be a friend", and overall is "nice". These, to me, are ways of saying the person is charismatic, or at least quite pleasant to be around. It is unclear to me how much this is actually true, or said in retrospect to talk up the newly hired person. Here are my questions: 


Have you ever been part of a hiring committee (or just hiring a postdoc for your group) when you and/or the committee chose someone who was "friendlier" over someone who had a better CV and/or gave a better talk?
Why did you ultimately make this choice?
In hindsight, do you feel it was the correct choice to make?
Alternatively, if the most credentialed (but possibly less friendly/charismatic) candidate was chosen, what was the discussion about this? Did the relative charisma of the candidates come up when making the decision?
The final pre-offer stage of most academic hiring processes is the "on-campus interview". This is when the candidates come, one at a time, spend a day on campus, give talks, speak with faculty, etc.

By and large, every candidate who receives an on-campus interview is qualified for the job. Therefore, at this point of the process, it is no longer useful to try to sort candidates by the strength of their CV alone. That has already been done at earlier stages of the process, and the candidates who received an on-campus interview already made it through that process.  

Therefore, it should not be surprising that, from time to time, someone with at "worse" CV gets an offer before someone with a "better" CV.  There are so many factors that the department takes into account, and the CV is just one. That does not mean that having a better CV is irrelevant at the end - it is very relevant! But it is just one piece of evidence among many at the end of the process. 

There is a lot of controversy about "fit". In the worst case, it can be a way to act on hidden biases, which is a valid cause for concern. You can read about all sides of this debate on in the Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Ed.