Python merge based on column position - python-2.7

Question

I have 2 dataframes like so,
ID employee group
1 Bob Accounting
2 Jake Engineering
3 Lisa Engineering
4 Sue HR
ID employee hire_date
1 Lisa 2004
2 Bob 2008
3 Jake 2012
4 Sue 2014
Now I'd like to merge these two dataframes on the employee column. Only the thing is, rather than mentioning the column name employee, I need to mention only the position of the employee column which I will know.
Simply put, I would like to merge the 2 dataframes on employee column without mentioning the column name, rather by mentioning column position only.
Now I tried something like this,
import pandas as pd
df1 = pd.DataFrame({'ID':[1,2,3,4], 'employee': ['Bob', 'Jake', 'Lisa', 'Sue'],
'group': ['Accounting', 'Engineering', 'Engineering', 'HR']})
df2 = pd.DataFrame({'ID':[1,2,3,4],'employee': ['Lisa', 'Bob', 'Jake', 'Sue'],
'hire_date': [2004, 2008, 2012, 2014]})
merged = pd.merge(df1, df2, left_on=df1.ix[:,[1]], right_on=df2.ix[:,[1]])
But it is throwing ValueError. So could somebody help me with this?

Answer 1

Try this:
df1.merge(df2, right_on=df2.columns[1], left_on=df1.columns[1])
Output:
ID_x employee group ID_y hire_date
0 1 Bob Accounting 2 2008
1 2 Jake Engineering 3 2012
2 3 Lisa Engineering 1 2004
3 4 Sue HR 4 2014

Answer 2

You can use list(df) to access a list of column names which you can reference by position:
merged = pd.merge(df1, df2, left_on = list(df1)[1], right_on = list(df2)[1])
Output:
ID_x employee group ID_y hire_date
0 1 Bob Accounting 2 2008
1 2 Jake Engineering 3 2012
2 3 Lisa Engineering 1 2004
3 4 Sue HR 4 2014