[HN Gopher] Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types
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Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types
Author : samizdis
Score : 34 points
Date : 2022-09-07 20:23 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daily.jstor.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (daily.jstor.org)
| IWillForgetThis wrote:
| I was asked to take the StrengthsFinder test (imo kind of similar
| to Myers-Briggs) after being hired on at my current employer. The
| results basically said my strengths are ADHD, but in a really
| positive way. Nobody ever followed up with me on it or mentioned
| it again. Honestly it was pretty accurate. The job is extremely
| laid back, no hard deadlines, no emergencies, etc. It's been a
| huge challenge to maintain a similar level of output when
| compared to past jobs.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| > And that's it--there's simply very little data on how well the
| Myers-Briggs (and other type-based personality tests) measures
| personality and even less on how it might predict job
| performance.
|
| I was surprised there wasn't any mention of a very interesting
| issue here, i.e. MBTI and other typological instruments come with
| user manuals, training, etc., and those materials specifically
| say "do not use this for hiring".
|
| This is true even in marketing materials...Here's an example
| directly from the Myers-Briggs Company website:
|
| https://www.themyersbriggs.com/en-us/company/press/press/202...
|
| Even as a personal growth tool the instrument itself is kinda
| meh, but the soft science behind it is pretty fascinating...
|
| And if you are concerned your employer is going to misuse your
| MBTI type somehow, 1) know your type first, ideally before they
| do 2) learn the associated relational blind spots and decide how
| you'll work around them 3) call yourself a "reformed XXXX"
| because basically the deeper theory is that any given personality
| type is similar to an illness in a lot of ways. Oh and 4) this
| may not be a very good workplace, good luck out there.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Is that really what you would do when a prospective employer
| asks such a question?
|
| I'd never ask about this, the number of bumps on someone's
| head, or if the candidate still beats their spouse. However,
| the best response would be a candidate who would laugh and say,
| "I think you know enough of my capabilities and personality
| from this interview process, already"
| themodelplumber wrote:
| If they just ask you to spit it out during an interview? I'd
| move on to the next interview unless desperate. I wouldn't
| presume about what they know about me, I'd just say, look, my
| understanding is that personality type factors are not
| considered appropriate as hiring criteria, and so it wouldn't
| feel right to answer that.
|
| I know some would give the type that they feel best matches
| the position, which, I guess they are also desperate for a
| job in that case.
|
| Unfortunately from what I've seen some hiring teams will give
| a questionnaire to fill out and a) it's not labeled as any
| specific type of questionnaire, plus b) you don't get to know
| your results. One sales company administered a combined IQ
| test and personality instrument this way. Pretty cringe. They
| had no certification or corporate permission or anything,
| just a copy paste test done attitude.
|
| Otherwise there's also the post-hire event in which a trainer
| offers insights, among which is some personality type sorting
| and theory, and even one on one coaching. Some of this kind
| of thing is absolutely worth it depending on the situation.
| For example you've identified someone you want to work more
| closely with in future projects, so you want to learn how
| they see themselves and their contribution.
|
| So it's best to feel it out, see if you can find a good way
| to respond to the specific circumstances at work without
| raising the stakes for yourself. Or basically broadcasting
| your personal relational blind spots as part of a complaint-
| driven process. :-)
| compiler-guy wrote:
| I appreciate it when a company asks about or tests my Myers-
| Briggs type early in the hiring process, because then I know that
| I don't want to work for them, and they wouldn't be happy with me
| either.
|
| Win/win.
| throwaway0asd wrote:
| I feel the exact opposite. At least they are measuring
| something vaguely objectively. Interviewing with most potential
| employers, at least in software, is like when children guess at
| picking players for sports teams while wearing a blindfold.
| Everything always seems to come down to biases applied non
| uniformly.
|
| Changing jobs is a big life investment. I would prefer it not
| be a blind date with one-way conversations from somebody likely
| abusive and neglectful looking for a surf to abuse. If the
| potential employer is instead interested in potential they are
| sending a signal they are willing to invest in you.
|
| Myers Briggs gets a lot of hate due to low precision but it's a
| cheap and fast assessment. There are much better assessments of
| personality but they take more time and are more invasive.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| "It doesn't work and is junk science, but at least it doesn't
| work for everyone equally" is an interesting methodology.
|
| I'd rather take the intuition of some interviewer because at
| least that's based on something real. I mean if objectivity
| is the only criterion you simply may want to roll a set of
| dice for the applicants because those are cheaper than Myers-
| Briggs consultants.
|
| the attitude of replacing useful human judgements with
| useless metrics in the name of eliminating bias is one of the
| worst trends in modern hiring.
| cosmotic wrote:
| What if they were using astrology? Would that be better than
| nothing? I think it would be worse than nothing because it
| demonstrates the aren't competent enough to know when they
| fell for a scam.
| mgarfias wrote:
| 100%
| 1retep wrote:
| Love this answer, I was thinking the same thing.
|
| I remember in college I applied to over 100 internships and my
| friend said "I don't understand how you wrote over 100 cover
| letters." My response was "I didn't. If they ask for a cover
| letter I don't want to work for them."
| chefandy wrote:
| And if you believe you're best represented as a bullet list
| of educational and professional accomplishments, I assure you
| that the feeling is mutual.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Cover letters are one of those things that are only really
| useful for the first few jobs. Once you've started working
| you will get most of your future jobs via your network and
| cover letters are pointless from then on.
| chefandy wrote:
| If you're content to work within your network or and only
| care about the craft rather than the overall purpose of
| your company and tasks, then sure. Jobs your friends and
| colleagues get you don't require a cover letter.
| notch656a wrote:
| You have constructed a fictional reality.
| chefandy wrote:
| Your professional network extends to every organization
| you'd aspire to work with, and you actually care about
| those organizations' goals? I assure you- that isn't the
| case for most people.
| notch656a wrote:
| And now you've constructed a straw man. Any other lies
| you'd like to tell about networks and your specious
| argument about your precious cover letter, without which
| I've gotten dozens of professional jobs by cold-applying
| from everything from mom and pop shops to fortune 500s?
|
| I'm sorry your resume is so shitty you have to write a
| letter before anyone outside your network will consider
| you. At least you're a good letter writer, I guess. <3
| chefandy wrote:
| It's hard to imagine why you're so focused on your hard
| skills.
|
| Edit: have you checked out https://slashdot.org recently?
| The tone of the discourse seems closer to what you're
| looking for.
| yjp20 wrote:
| Be civil
| notch656a wrote:
| More people here ought to speak their mind directly
| rather than the passive-agressive bullshit I normally see
| of packaging up their nonsense in formally constructed
| rule-abiding arguments that are the intellectual version
| of shit-slinging. Getting banned from this place at this
| point would be a gift. But thank you, 1 karma account
| created 7 months ago, who's contribution to date is an
| unpunctuated pair of words.
|
| Suggesting you need a cover letter to get considered
| outside your network is peak filthy-lie territory, and
| ought to be met with ridicule and only civility to the
| point that we stay within confines of the law. Offering
| an unpleasant rebuttal within the legal bounds of freedom
| of speech is the most civility owed here.
| tempestn wrote:
| I agree. I'm not interested in software that will screen
| resumes for keywords or that kind of thing. Instead we ask
| a simple question right in our job postings, asking that an
| answer be included in the application, and that filters out
| 90% of applicants who don't bother. If someone additionally
| includes a decent cover letter, they go to the top of the
| pile. We want people who took the time to read our posting
| and want to work here, not those who are just spamming
| resumes everywhere.
| chefandy wrote:
| Yeah. Filling a perfectly developer-shaped hole in your
| team? Sure... Sort a stack of resumes by experience and
| education and contact the top n applicants. Want more
| than dense pull requests, snide code reviews, and lots of
| "well actually" interjections even when discussing things
| outside their expertise? You might be disappointed with
| your options if you're only booking interviews based on
| resumes.
| coldtea wrote:
| I don't, because it means people in less fortunate industries
| that can't be pickers, but also programmers if a downturn
| comes, would have more companies pulling this shit to deal
| with...
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| MBTI isn't scientific, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful.
|
| If someone says a particular type fits them well, that helps
| you understand them quickly. And if they say the type they get
| doesn't describe them, then you don't need to use that
| information.
| erdos4d wrote:
| Same for any "personality test" you find in the hiring process.
| Huge red flag.
| biomcgary wrote:
| When I was managing, I informally typed people during the
| interview process, which was very helpful in predicting both
| how they would interact with other team members and how they
| would do at particular tasks. However, I learned not to rely on
| self-reported personality types or tests, which are often
| answered aspirationally, not realistically.
|
| To me, MBTI or Big 5 (not the actual tests, but their framing
| of aspects of personality) are mental tool kits for trying to
| make better predictions from limited data (i.e., the interview
| process). As a manager, I've found them incredibly helpful for
| avoiding problems (i.e., assigning the wrong task to a person).
|
| Interestingly, in my personal experience, I've found logicians
| (ISTJs in MTBI) seem to be the most resistant to quantifying
| aspects of personality.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Better yet, you should scan the shape of each candidate's
| skull and use that as a metric to aid in decisionmaking.
| biomcgary wrote:
| A stethoscope in the hands of a doctor is a useful, if
| limited, tool. Don't judge its value if you have never seen
| one except in the hands of the village idiot. (One could
| say the same about various programming languages.)
|
| If measuring skull shape during the interview process was
| a) socially acceptable and b) actually predictive of
| outcomes, why not? The problem is that it is neither. The
| reason that it is not a) is because it was not b) and thus
| easily misused to justify stereotypes.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| A galvanometer in a physician's hand is even more
| dangerous than that of the village idiot. Just ask my
| late grandmother who was preyed on until the board de-
| certified that "doctor."
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Are you asserting that MBTI is either of those things?
| drchopchop wrote:
| My company gave managers Clifton Strengths tests, and it was
| fairly interesting (and tracked with my own self-introspection).
| Wasn't used for hiring or performance, but more as a tool to
| people recognize their traits and how others may differ.
|
| https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/253790/science-of...
| IWillForgetThis wrote:
| Same, it was surprisingly on point when I took it.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Does your self-introspection read something like this?
|
| " You have a great need for other people to like and admire
| you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a
| great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your
| advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are
| generally able to compensate for them. Your sexual adjustment
| has presented problems for you. Disciplined and self-controlled
| outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times
| you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right
| decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount
| of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by
| restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself as an
| independent thinker and do not accept others' statements
| without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too
| frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are
| extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are
| introverted, wary, reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to
| be pretty unrealistic. Security is one of your major goals in
| life. "
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The thing that has always amused me about the personality types
| is that everyone is all of these things and how much they are of
| one or the other depends on the circumstances. You can change the
| questions very slightly and get wildly different results. While
| interesting in a way to understand human interactions and some
| form of classification of that they aren't usually something
| fixed, they don't really measure personality because its a whole
| lot more complex than these measures.
|
| Most people still believe that your peak heart rate is 220 - age
| when the paper that determined this showed no one actually met
| that at all and the variance was massive, the same is true of
| Myers Briggs we are a long way away from the original science
| with the use of these tests and since no one reads the papers
| they don't realise how badly its being applied.
| daniel-s wrote:
| If they tested horoscopes we would roll our eyes but larp as
| academics and it's taken seriously.
| 4ad wrote:
| The article makes the mistake assuming that companies are using
| these tests to maximize for performance, when in fact they are
| trying to maximize internal culture fit.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Where said internal culture is either "people who'll believe in
| fortune tellers if they're wearing lab coats" or "people so
| desperate for employment and/or validation they'll cast aside
| their values to fit in".
| UncleEntity wrote:
| People who study for the "correct" personality alongside the
| code quiz questions which all have very little to do with the
| actual job they will be doing.
|
| No right minded person would hire me for an "energetic,
| outgoing go-getter" job.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| This doesn't answer the "Why" in the headline "Why Companies Are
| So Interested in Your Myers-Briggs Type".
| CharlesW wrote:
| It's a bit buried, but the gist appears to be (italics mine):
|
| "And that's it -- there's simply very little data on how well
| the Myers-Briggs (and other type-based personality tests)
| _measures personality_ and even less on how it might _predict
| job performance_. "
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > there's simply very little data on how well the Myers-Briggs
| (and other type-based personality tests) measures personality and
| even less on how it might predict job performance.
|
| Any personality test is bad in my opinion and I wouldn't like
| being tested in it but this statement and article feels like feel
| good pseudoscience. Is there any data on any kind of test that it
| works? At least for Myers-Briggs it has been tested and it hasn't
| been proved or disproved.
| brnt wrote:
| In Europe I've never seen these tests as an entrance exam; just
| yesterday I watched Persona and was surprised that McDonalds of
| all companies seems to require such testing.
|
| What's the deal here? Companies are so desperate for any
| criterion to reduce the pile of applicants? Do they believe it
| helps? Do they look for a few of these profiles and never the
| others?
|
| Hiring is hard, I know, but I only know of these models in the
| context of understanding existing teams, not hiring for
| individual positions.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >What's the deal here? Companies are so desperate for any
| criterion to reduce the pile of applicants? Do they believe it
| helps? Do they look for a few of these profiles and never the
| others?
|
| Yes. They are looking for anything that lends credibility to
| their choices and that they believe objectively guides them
| toward the right candidates. Truth is, it's a total crapshoot
| but no one wants to acknowledge or believe that.
| abraae wrote:
| The dirty secret of recruitment software/processes is that
| recruiters are dealing with hundreds or thousands of resumes,
| the vast majority of which they will end up rejecting somewhere
| along the funnel, and they are eager for better ways.
|
| It's actually pretty draining and difficult doing multi-way
| comparisons between so many candidates, let alone doing it day
| after day. And recruiters/HR are only human.
|
| So any technology or approach that can attach a number/rank a
| job application is seen as hugely welcome. If Bob scored 56 out
| of 100, and Sue scored 87, then even if we have doubts about
| the methodology, surely we can still go ahead and reject Bob
| based on such a large difference! Then we don't need to spend a
| lot of time looking at Bob's resume, we can screen him out
| early on.
|
| The dirty secret is that it doesn't even matter that much
| whether the scoring process has any real science behind it -
| the mere fact of attaching a number is so desirable that
| employers are wide open and begging for this kind of
| capability. At the end of the day, who really cares if Alice
| was better that Bob or not? Virtually no companies have the HR
| performance monitoring in place to even know this anyway.
|
| That's why in the HR world, psych testing firms are not quite
| fly by night, but they are the kind of companies an
| entrepeneurial type can set up in a couple of weeks with very
| little tech but a lot of powerpoints, and immediately start
| selling to really big companies that will funnel a lot of money
| their way. Such companies normally make a big song and dance
| about the scientific verifiability of their
| technology/approach, even to the extent of having on-staff
| psychologists.
|
| Many people would feel though that the process has little more
| validity than reading tea leaves, or drawing up astrology
| charts.
| gmarx wrote:
| The author says each of the big 5 is on a "sliding scale". I
| admit this is a bit pedantic, but isn't each just on a plain old
| scale? Wouldn't a sliding scale imply that one score could affect
| how another was graded?
| xvedejas wrote:
| I always thought "sliding scale" was a redundant phrase. If it
| does mean something beyond a continuous scale, then the author
| may be making the same mistake as me.
| gmarx wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_scale_fees
|
| I learned the term WRT insulin for diabetes. I think the key
| is that the scale you use for determining something (fees,
| insulin dose) changes depending on other characteristics of
| the person
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Myers-Briggs is essentially horoscopes for people who spend too
| much time on LinkedIn.
| slothtrop wrote:
| The analysis is, but "types" are just preferences/tendencies
| that everyone has, reflected back from the test. It says "I
| tend towards introversion or not, being detail-oriented or not"
| etc. That's it. Mind you, that's of no use to your employer who
| wants you to do your damn job whatever it happens to be. If you
| want the job, it's for you.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| The types themselves are also nonsense. There's sixteen of
| them, and all sixteen have significant tendencies in all four
| axes. It seems extremely unlikely that someone would always
| have a tendency in every axis all the time, so the types
| themselves are set up wrong. They're not even acknowledging
| the possibility of an inconclusive result.
|
| It's also easy to see the financial incentive of removing the
| possibility for someone to get an "unremarkable" result.
| Telling people that they're mostly average, even if for a lot
| of people it's the truth, doesn't convince them they're
| getting their money's worth.
| rasz wrote:
| Im sure there are tutorials on the net on how to pass for
| particular desired type. As anything, once you measure something
| it becomes the goal.
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| It's business horoscopes. My Myers-Briggs type is Pisces.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| I would also have accepted "Golgari", "Hufflepuff" or "Lawful
| Evil".
| LordGrey wrote:
| Apple went through the Myers-Briggs phase in the 90's, along with
| a lot of the other tech giants.
|
| It was a half-day seminar. "Professionals" gave the tests and
| told everyone their type. That took only an hour. The rest of the
| time was spent doing role-playing, where you were supposed to use
| your coworkers' MB types to adjust your interaction with them in
| various settings.
|
| It was a waste of time then and I bet it still is.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I never worked for Apple, but I went through a similar exercise
| in the late 1980's. I found the role-playing useful, and I
| found the techniques we were trained on to be enlightening. Not
| everybody thinks the same way, and even though it's not valid
| to categorize people into 16 personality groups, it's useful to
| understand that people prioritize things and think differently
| from each other. Here's a great example of that:
|
| https://generallythinking.com/richard-feynman-on-thinking-pr...
| airocker wrote:
| Helen Fischer's work on personality types may hold some value
| that various hormones cause personality traits. Myers Briggs imho
| is just messed up thing no better than horoscopes.
|
| It used to be used at a large company that I worked for. The
| preferred types were RED and BLUE around 2010. GREEN AND YELLOW I
| remember were overlooked for promotions. Everyone was trying to
| be the biggest idiot in the room to prove they were RED person.
| It propogated bullying and prevented good teamwork. Credit
| Stealing was legitimized with preference for RED. If Helen
| Fischer is correct and RED people are the closest to testesterone
| heavy people, the RED people have the shortest neural circuits.
| savryn wrote:
| It's funny how defensive hn and other parts of the internet are
| about being put in made-up 'no-evidence' /psuedoscience boxes....
|
| yet everyone here completely understands the dozens of archetypes
| and human personality portraits invoked by hundreds of ever
| changing memes and meme-speak...
|
| "don't be that guy" "tell me youre x without telling me ..." ms-
| paint wojacks, etc
|
| I think people who's pattern recognition works great on
| classifying others in the private (read:petty) freedom of their
| own mind are also the exact brittle, neurotically vulnerable
| hypocrites bristling about other's pattern recognition seeing
| them... (I'm all the latter but embrace it lol)
|
| The same crowd that loves quantified self and concrete "evidence"
| would hate to be seen as they are by actual tally of what they do
| and how their time is spent, or especially to have their most
| common interpersonal reactions categorized into a dozen buckets,
| of gut-reactions, core values, status stuff, etc.
|
| Any whiff that someone has figured you out and hark, all of a
| sudden you contain multitudes! Meanwhile, developing advertising
| software to build ever more accurate portraits of consumer
| types...
|
| MBTI is as useful as you make it, as are harry potter groups,
| memes, vibes, DSM-mental illness groups, shakespeare's tragedies,
| etc.
|
| They work great if you put them to work, shrug. It's just a word-
| substrate to better deal with the intuitions you already have
| going on about people subconsciously.
|
| meh, I guess I'd just much rather know exactly what stereotypes /
| impressions I invoke in others with my looks/identity markers
| (age sex race etc), behaviors, class mannerisms, aesthetics,
| posture etc.... and then take it from there if I don't like what
| I see in the mirror.
|
| (seeing people seeing us is always a mirror i think)
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