An important phase of human resource management is personnel selection, which is concerned withidentifying an individual from a pool of candidates suitable for a vacant position. As with many decisionproblems, personnel selection problem is very complex in real life. to develop a model for personnel selectionproblem in order to identify criteria for personnel selection by using the modified Delphi method andeliciting criteria hierarchy for personnel selection. In this model, after reviewing pertinent literature, theDelphi technique was used to seek best ideas from managers and experts for criteria selectiona case study of personnel selection criteria in a project based company fora project manager position. The results show that the proposed models perform very well in selectioncriteria and can improve efficiency in decision making process.The goal of the methodology is to form the panel ofexperts and determine the criteria hierarchy for personnel selection.In this method, the Delphi technique wasused to seek best ideas from managers and experts for criteriaselection This method includes aniterative process that usually needs three or four rounds of surveywith the panel experts. By the end of every round, the data areanalyzed and sent for the next round. The procedure will befinished after reaching a group consensus. a case study was conducted in an Iraniancompany. MAPNA is a large multi disciplinary power holdingorganization. It is located in Tehran, and it has 371 employees whoare organized in five main organizational units. 14 of these personshave acquired international certificates in Professional ProjectManagement (PMP). This section discusses the results, analysisand findings from using Delphi method for developing selectioncriteria hierarchy for the project manager. A critical task for a projectbased organization is project managers selection.The selection criteria should specifically be defined to cover thedecision makers requirements and correspond to the specific jobcharacteristics. For diverse job description varied criteria should betaken into consideration, for example, system analyst, and projectexperts, etc. To specify the most suitable assessment criteria, themodified Delphi method has been exploited. A list consisting ofselection criteria extracted from related literature and interviewswith experts were designed and sent to some expertsA group of nine experts were chosen to form an expert panel. Thenthese experts were asked to specify the project manger selectioncriteria. The respondents were all among the companymanagers with relevant knowledge and more than fiveyears of experience in project administration. Managementhad selected a panel consisting of procurement deputy,engineering deputy, executive deputy, administrative andfinancial deputy, planning deputy, quality and systemsdeputy, inspection manager, HSE manager, contractsmanager, and the HR Department. The expert panel wasresponsible for eliciting the most relevant criteria for aproject manager position. The experts were asked to givetheir supposedselection criteria in an anonymousconfidential form.Investigating existing literatures for projectmanger selection demonstrate some criteria whichrequire evaluation by the organization expertsResults of the Delphi round oneAfter step 2 of the proposed methodology, 15potential criteria from literatures in projectmanager selection evaluation were selected. Forelicitation criteria, Delphi technique was used.Consequently, the first potential criteria forevaluating project managers identified fromliterature can be presented in a form. That listincludes all criteria which have been identifiedwithin the grouping of selected criteria. Then inthe first round expert panels determine theimportance or relevance of each criterion. All ofthe respondents agreed with the ten criteria. Theform requested the experts to consider the criteriaand the definitions. While some wording wasmodified, overall the decision makers endorsedthe operational definitions.Results of the Delphi round twoAccording to the group interest about the criteria,the experts corrected their interest in the secondDelphi round. Finally, the criteria that have moreimportance will be selected after a few discussion. Nine members of the expert team consideredthe results of first Delphi round and edited their opinionsaccording to feedback. Consequently, 14 projectmanager selection criteria were selected in this step During this step (second round ofDelphi), the nine experts were asked to the decisionabout the two un-consensus criteria (Human skills,Technical skills). Eight of them agreed to delete thesecriteria because they believed that they were seen asintegral parts of other criteria and no need to repeat.Results of the Delphi round threeIn this step, based upon the similarities among the skills,experts must group their selected criteria in a hierarchicalstructure. Then, hierarchy of the criteria must bestructured. Another form was used to develop a hierarchyof the hiring criteria for project manager selection. Theform asked the experts separate their criteria into relatedgroups, and to suggest names for the groups of criteria.When this form was completed by all 10 experts, theindividual responses were aggregated into separatecomprehensive lists for the four sub criteria: Basicrequirements, Management skills, Project managementskills, and Interpersonal skills. At this stage, there were substantial differences amongthe experts regarding the ways to group related criteria.Therefore, the facilitators met with each group tosynthesize the responses to these form. Some expertsexpressed concerns about, for example, the difficulty ofseparating project managerial skills from management skills. After the third round of Delphi, the 14 criteria werestructured into four main groups: Basic Requirements,Project Management Skills, Management Skills, andInterpersonal Skills. The final criteria structure for projectmanager selection in this study is shown in Figure 3. Thetop level describes the main objective, which is projectmanager selection. To do that, four major criteria areconsidered, namely Basic Requirements, ProjectManagement Skills, Management Skills, andInterpersonal Skills. These criteria are then divided into atotal 14 sub criteria.DISCUSSIONone hierarchical structure consisting ofselection criteria and sub criteria, by the help of Delphimethod is created. In this way, experts are encouraged tofocus on proper criteria, rather than to use inappropriatecriteria. The methods such as Delphi are useful forunstructured problems. The Delphi method solvesdisagreements of exerts by feedback. Utilizing thisframework as a group decision making for aggregating,by providing feedback to the experts about their ideas,will increase their integration. Overall, this systematiccriteria selection will help to increase the depth ofanalysis and finally will provide a decision making withmore quality. In a group decision environment, deference of opinionsis normal and usual. Each expert has a differentbackground and different knowledge and experience.Accordingly, each expert suggests different sets ofcriteria and preference. This difference is intensified withusing the Delphi method. It is true that Delphi generatesconflict, but it is also true that Delphi manages thisconflict with feedback property. In the first steps of thefirst stage, experts contribute a diversity of viewpointsabout producing selection criteria. However, in the nextsteps they consider other comments, and they find anopportunity for rethinking their ideas.ConclusionFrom the scientific decision making point of view, manyscholars have dealt with the personnel selection problem.To handle this decision making problem, they combinedtechniques from operational research with artificialintelligence fields. Expert systems, fuzzy linguisticvariables, neural networks and multi criteria decisionmaking techniques used as methodology. According toprevious studies in literature, there is no systematicmethod that can help companies in preparing andchoosing personnel selection criteria. However, thisresearch has showed that the Delphi method can beused as guidelines for companies and that can enableeach company to determine the essential criteria of eachjob position based on experts opinion. This studyselected the criteria for draft list in Delphi method, frompertinent literature. Review of pertinent literature anddiscussion with experts and using Delphi method, thisthree together increase the efficiency of criteria selectionstage. The proposed model can also be applied toproblems such as project selection, material selectionand many other areas of management decision problemsor strategy selection problems.