Having some tangible measure or metrics is definitely better than judging a number of candidates for a given position haphazardly. Although H-index is not crucial but is one of the well respected measure internationally. IMHO, If a package including h-index, experience, research activity, performance, ... can be designed it would be better. My final word is "A Bad Rule Is Better Than No Rule".

The advantage of the h-index is that it combines productivity (i.e. number of papers produced) and impact (number of citations) in a single number. So both productivity and impact are required for a high h index; neither a few highly cited papers or a long list of papers with only a handful of (or no!) citations will yield a high h index.

But as attractive as it is to have a single number that measures scientific performance, it is only a rough indicator and should only be considered as such. Hirsch himself writes:

Obviously a single number can never give more than a rough approximation to an individual’s multifaceted profile, and many other factors should be considered in combination in evaluating an individual. This and the fact that there can always be exceptions to rules should be kept in mind especially in life-changing decision such as the granting or denying of tenure.

For more information please refer to the following link

http://bitesizebio.com/13614/does-your-h-index-measure-up/

Yes, h-index can play a crucial role in hiring researchers as it is the indicator of standard/scientific research and potential. It can be checked by visiting the web site www.scopus.com.

The h-index is an author-level metric that attempts to measure both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar.  It combines a measure of quantity (publications) and impact (citations) and allows us to characterize the scientific output of a researcher with objectivity and, therefore, may play an important role when making decisions about promotions, fund allocation and awarding prizes.

Read it, it is the improvement of Hirsh index. Updated h-index could be better index for hiring the researchers, but not the only one, of course. 

"The growing interest in scientometry stems from ethical concerns related to the proper evaluation of scientific contributions of an author working in a hard science. In the absence of a consensus, institutions may use arbitrary methods for evaluating scientists for employment and promotion. There are several indices in use that attempt to establish the most appropriate and suggestive position of any scientist in the field he/she works in. A scientist's Hirsch-index (h-index) quantifies their total effective published output, but h-index summarizes the total value of their published work without regard to their contribution to each publication. Consequently, articles where the author was a primary contributor carry the same weight as articles where the author played a minor role. Thus, we propose an updated h-index named Hirsch(p,t)-index that informs about both total scientific output and output where the author played a primary role. Our measure, h(p,t) = h(p),h(t), is composed of the h-index h(t) and the h-index calculated for articles where the author was a key contributor; i.e. first/shared first or senior or corresponding author. Thus, a h(p,t) = 5,10 would mean that the author has 5 articles as first, shared first, senior or corresponding author with at least 5 citations each, and 10 total articles with at least 10 citations each. This index can be applied in biomedical disciplines and in all areas where the first and last position on an article are the most important..."

Article An updated h-index measures both the primary and total scien...

No H. Index is one parameter but there are other important factors like the speciality the impact point grants awards history .team spirit and ability to lead and innovate

in my opinion, most researcher cite there work so for that the number of citation doesn't mean that the research has high impact, looking for quality and originality of research is more important.

Hirsch originally suggested the h-index for application at the micro level, that is, as a measure to quantify the scientific output of a single researcher. However, the h-index can be used not only for the lifetime achievements of a single researcher but can be applied to any (more extensive)  publication set.

Some advantages of H-index:

• It combines a measure of quantity (publications) and impact (citations).
• It allows us to characterize the scientific output of a researcher with objectivity and, therefore, may play an important role when making decisions about promotions, fund allocation and awarding prizes.
• It performs better than other single-number criteria commonly used to evaluate the scientific output of a researcher (impact factor, total number of documents, total number of citations, citation per paper rate and number of highly cited papers).
• The h-index can be easily obtained by anyone with access to the Thomson ISI Web of Science and, in addition, it is easy to understand.

A very good link discussing advantages, limitations and its relation with other bibliometric indicators is attached.

http://sci2s.ugr.es/hindex

       Everybody coincides to say that the h-index measure quantity(publications) and impact(citations), but this assumes several concepts that must be nuanced, from my humble opinion. Let me summarize some of them:

       1. The subjects do not receive the same number of cites. For instance, is not the same to publish in medicine or in topology.

       2. All the cites are positive for this index, when sometimes a paper might be cited due to be wrong.

       3.  This index do not distinguish the number of authors in a paper or their contributions, the importance of the teams or the new knowledge produced in the scientific community. This avoids to assign an individual and personal merit to one h index.

        In summary to compare two different h-indexes is not justified and even could be very wrong. Although it could be something like when you look at a curriculum counting the number of sheets that it has.

Yep, I think that H-index is very important for those whose level of expertise is not enough to evaluate a candidate by themselves.

Yes,I think h-index can play a crucial role in hiring researchers as it is the indicator of standard - scientific research and potential.

Dear Dr. Ra'ed (Moh'd Taisir) Masa'deh,

Certainly, not. This performance indicator is useful in promotion but not for hiring.  

Being realists, it already does. Increasingly many investors do not have to ask for a CV, but just for someone's h-index. They check, and the process of hiring -interviewing- etc., begins.

Dear Dr.

Have a nice time and good luck

Yes, I think that h-index may play a crucial role in hiring researchers at universities in the next period. Till now h- index reflects only the citation of the researcher works. But, It must be calculated and categorized into subsections based on different research topics for the same author and for the topics and issues.

Yours,

Ahmed Saeed Hassanien

In my opinion, h-index is really not an indicator of excellence  or promise in research work, since I have come across many persons not having enough fundamental knowledge about a particular topic,but still managed to get h-index by group activity, i.e,by asking a particular set of persons to cite a particular paper ,and asking his/her contacts also to vote for the same paper.This kind of vote gathering in science in not real scientific activity. It only leads to waste of time and misleading people into believing about a person(s) capabilities.

A high h-index may not be an indicator of excellence, but a low h-index is certainly a valid indicator of low relevancy of one's research.

Dear RG colleagues,

Thank you so much for your great contributions, I do appreciate your ideas, opinions, time and efforts. Best Regards, 

It depends of the researcher's job place. If the job place is known with its high performance , H index could be a competitive value of hiring researchers. If the job place is not competitive, researcher should be assessed according to the ratio of his performance and the job place working status

I don't that it will have so much impact for hiring a researcher. Quality of work may be more important that just h-index.

Not at all ... it just a number and formulated bias to researcher in western community

I don't think just a number can decide about the caliber of a researcher

Several times, I have seen that even researchers having  a good h-index  number do not possess adequate knowledge about what he or she is talking about.They , in fact confuse people. This is my experience. So, as far as I am concerned, my opinion is that h-index should not be used to judge the quality of a person's ability, but may indicate the quality of one's research work to some extent at a higher level.Certainly this should not apply  at all for new entrants into the research work.

If you're looking for career advice, strike a balance between publishing high quality and high quantity papers. Also, other products such as patents and conference proceedings may also advance your career....

...Italy introduced a few years ago a habilitation process which involves heavy bibliometric evaluation, and in the process they computed median values for all the professors in Italian universities for:

number of papers published in 10 years

citations per year

a sort of normalized H-index: the number h such that the person has h papers with score >=h, where a paper published Y years ago with C citations has score 4C/Y...

Nice discussion under this attached thread!

http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/68900/any-data-for-average-number-of-papers-per-year-at-different-career-stages/69716#69716