A Method for the Team Selection Problem Between Two Decision-Makers Using the Ant Colony Optimization

The team selection issue is important in the management of human resources, in which the purpose is to conduct a personnel selection process to form teams according to certain preferences. This selection problem is usually solved by ranking the candidates based on the preferences of decision-makers and allowing the decision-makers to select a candidate on its turn. While this solution method is simple and might seem fair it usually results in an unfair allocation of candidates to the different teams, i.e. the quality of the teams might be quite different according to the rankings articulated by the decision-makers. In this paper we propose a new approach to the team selection problem in which two employers should form their teams selecting personnel from a set of candidates that is common to both; each decision-maker has a personal ranking of those candidates. The objective it to make teams of high quality according to the valuation of each of the decision-makers; this results in a method for the team selection problem which not only result in high quality teams, but also focuses on a fair composition of the teams. Our approach is based on the Ant Colony Optimization metaheuristic, and allows to solve large instances of the problem as shown in the experimental section of this paper.