I suppose that when a person is hired into a regular job their personality which comes across in an interview would be considered, for example how they would fit into a team and so on?
What if you were deciding on a person who would take charge of a piece of equipment (with no benefit to them except maybe the experience :|) and you have two candidates one who is very technically sound but severely lacks people skills and is known to cut corners when doing procedures. And another who is technically weaker (due to lack of experience) but can work well with other people and follows procedures correctly. Bearing in mind that the person would have to teach other new people coming into the lab and deal with technical issues that crop up. I am inclined to pick the less later person as his technical weak points could be improved with more experience and training but personality issues are not so easily overcome.
In another scenario where a person wishes to use a piece of sensitive equipment without supervision; They do a demonstration to the person in charge without any flaws in their technical skills, however they display impatience and not caring too much about following certain checks which ensure the machine continues to work properly. During the demonstration all the proper procedures are followed but here and there certain impatience is displays which makes the person in charge wonder if they would skip things if left alone. Would it be prejudicial or wrong to not allow that person to use it without supervision based on these "feelings"? In this case the persons work may be affected as they now have to wait for the person in charge to also be available.
