Building a Team
Only one criterion matter in a candidate: value — which is a function of the candidate's competence and differences.
Competence
Competence can only be assessed by assessing a combination of factors such as domain expertise, rational thinking, the ability to act, ethics, conscience, work culture and emotional maturity. Furthermore, these aspects can only be judged from extensive rounds of interviews, long associations with the candidate and thorough background checks; not merely through resumes or CVs.
Nonetheless, resumes and CVs serve as good filters. They must be a combination of what you want to know and what the candidate wants you to know. Today's resumes are more of the latter and contain information that don't really matter; such as the objective statement (because there are only two objectives to work: to make money and/or to be a part of an extraordinary project). If a resume does not contain strengths, skills, professional qualifications, experience, what the candidates think they can contribute to, where they think they can take the process to and references to their work, it is quite useless.
Professional qualifications are great for HR recruiters to filter the huge inflow of applications. But do not always equate professional qualifications for competence, especially with the way most institutions and boards conduct their exams and evaluations. To an organisation, skills matter, not the certificates. A shelf load of certificates is not going to do get the job done. The only way to evaluate domain expertise and technical skills is to conduct extensive rounds of interview and scrutinize previous projects.
Discussing closely held topics like politics and religion are very suitable to evaluate the thought process of the candidate. Any other subject will not persuade him to defend it when attacked, or tribalise when agreed, especially when a job at stake. Subjects like religion and politics are strongly held, that they inhibit such tendencies and persuade the person to at least respond, if not react, thereby exposing the true self.
This tactic isn't fool proof. Despite the touchy nature of religion and politics, a candidate may succeed in faking himself. If so, it can be assumed that despite the pressures, politics, favouritism and other management evils, the person can "fake" the right decision as well; and that's all that matters — the right decision.
Do not be surprised if, during a deliberation, reasoning ends up with two conclusions. In most cases, reasoning converges into one conclusion, but when subjective metrics and instincts are involved, it can end up with multiple conclusions. Therefore, it does not matter which side the candidate is on, or whether you agree with him or not, but what matters is whether there is some sensible thought process in arriving at that conclusion.
Like minds gel well but they may not serve well in tackling a problem since everyone in the team will think alike. But never compromise on a rational and common-sensical thought process whatever the outcome is.
There is a common saying that you do half and God will do the rest. My experience tells me that those who hold this attitude never go the extra mile at the most demanding time. The problem is not their ardent faith, but what it has done to their brain — it has rewired their thought process to end all attempts to solve a problem after a certain point and expect God to do the rest.
Thoughts by themselves do not yield results. Therefore, the ability and willingness to act on thoughts must be judged. Few are those who think properly, and fewer are those who act on them. It is rewarding to team up with those who not only talk the right things, but also act. Actions can be impeded by laziness, fear and stupidity. While it is far fetching to expect an individual to be void of these traits, it is reasonable to expect the individual to have control over these traits than be a slave to them. Self-discipline is what you are looking for.
There are several motivations that drive a person: money, product, position, impact, etc. It is hard to rank them since no motivation is a generally a bad motivation, or simply better than the other. Besides, almost everyone is driven by a combination of these motivations (money may add the most weight). It is good to know the factors that motivate a member in the team.
Team up with those who are self driven, self-managed, committed and accountable since organisations must dedicate every minute of their time to products, services and customers; not managing people in the organisation. Time is the most precious asset.
If your team members aren't zealous and productive without enforcing targets or awarding incentives, you have hired the wrong members.
Differences
Differences in personal and professional values are worth considering especially when hiring for key roles, because they eventually create a crack in the team and affect its performance. Even if the candidate compromises, the differences accentuate at some point in future.
Professional differences can directly harm the process. So it may not be in the best interest of the process to make compromises with professional ideologies. If an engineer with a particular software design philosophy joins a team with an opposing philosophy, it will mostly likely result in a cold war between the factions; consequentially resulting in sub optimal performances.
Differences in political ideologies should not matter normally. But these days, professionals have become so unprofessional that a left leaning professional may not prefer to work in an enterprise owned or managed by right leaning professionals; and vice versa. Unless the project is of political nature, it is best not to team up with such unprofessional candidates.
So is the case with religious differences.
Diversity
The argument for diversity in a team is that culture moulds members to have different thought processes which can be applied to solve a problem in the most efficient and sensible manner. Judging by this context, only few teams and processes engage in solving such problems that require the safety of multiple thought processes. A special force unit may be an example of this. The rest of the teams and processes follow what is known as the standard operating procedures (SOPs), which negates the usefulness of multiple thinking machines in the team. Therefore, only few have to make diversity a condition or priority for hiring. Others, not only have no benefit in doing so, but can also attract disadvantages such as increased cost in forcing diversity.
Also, to say that diversity brings any tangible benefit to teams and processes, the benefits must indeed be due to traits moulded by the different cultural backgrounds. If not, the benefit is not due to diversity. Diverse people are those who actually was brought up in the indigenous culture and continues to practice their culture instead of adhering to mono culture. Only they posses the traits inculcated by multi-cultural environment. Most so called diverse people in a particular geography are brought up in the same culture and practice the same culture. They are diverse only by their looks and don't posses the traits inculcated by multi-cultural environment. They cannot therefore make the said contributions.
The other argument for diversity in a team is social justice. Representation as social justice roots from the idea of equality of outcome, an idea that is disregards competence. Note that diversity is not an adversary to competence, but the commitment to diversity is because it makes you hire people based on their race, gender or whatever trait constitute diversity. And in this discrimination, some extremely competent candidates will be cut off simple because they do not come from a particular community. The only commitment that organisations must make is the commitment to their mission; which means they should have hire people on the basis of competence, not the diversity quota.
Diversity must not be forced. It must be an after-effect of the organisation's commitment to hiring competent people. In organisations that function in multiple ethnic states, if hiring is based on competence, the workforce will be diverse by nature. In domestic organisations however, because their reach is small, there will be a larger share of local population in the workforce. For them, cost is also a major determinant in hiring the top talent in the industry. These are not discriminations, but natural constraints.