Hacker News Reader

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"

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. :-)

I get what you're saying. I do.

It's true that interviews aren't always easy to maneuver, but the interview process of today reflects the manager, teammates, and workplace of tomorrow.

So, are you saying that a sucky interview process at one place today predicts the general practices of the same workplace in the future? Or all workplaces? The first case seems kinda rational if not without exceptions; the second kind of less rational.

The first line about getting what I'm saying is typically used to telegraph disagreement beyond the point of consideration, which kind of weirdly raises the stakes for you, rhetorically. Humor is better, or feel free to tell me to pound sand because you are about to drop a truth bomb.

I think parent meant the interview reflects how the job will be, not that it reflects how every other job will be.

Given that beliefs about personality types are so widespread, it shouldn't be too hard to guess which traits have positive and negative connotations, and learn to project the positive ones. This is not radically different than just making an effort to get along with people.

Context is king though. Traits or expressions have different good/bad connotations according to different types/type-informed contexts, that's the basic idea of how type works, how wars are started, etc.

Personality type theory shines exactly in those kinds of situations, where it works better to zoom in and look at group composition, isolating for specific perspectives and integrations, rather than zooming out to broader abstractions about humans or people in general.

It very often turns out that people have radically different ideas of what it means to get along, and who that should be done with, and when. Advising people to "make an effort to get along" can be extremely offensive when all parties have nearly exhausted their known resources for doing so.

I'm assuming that folk beliefs about personality typing are more widespread than actual constructive uses for it, so that if I ever encounter the latter, I can deal with it as an exception.

> basically the deeper theory is that any given personality type is similar to an illness in a lot of ways.

Yet oddly enough just about everyone has at least one MB type.

Well, yes.

The religious right embraces the doctrine of "original sin". The secular left focuses on the concept of "unconscious bias". It seems to be part of the human condition across all cultures and ideologies to view people as inherently flawed, and to see the path toward sanctification as being recognition and never ending struggle against those inherent flaws.

Myers-Briggs is just the LinkedIn counterpart to this. Fodder for "Tell me about your strengths and weaknesses, and a situation in which you've had to overcome the latter" interview questions. You're supposed to don your hairshirt, beat your breast, and talk about your struggle for salvation in order to demonstrate piety to the interviewer.

> if you are concerned your employer is going to misuse your MBTI type somehow

A potential employer will never know what my MBTI type is, so they can't misuse it.

That depends. For example I was trained and tested to meet with a person and determine not only their MBTI type, but also their preferred cognitive processes, without ever talking about personality type with them. The testing was extremely difficult. But the skill is extremely valuable in knowing which questions to ask people as they try to navigate career and life change.

You might be surprised to find how easy it is to make a very good guess, after all there are 16 types and this usually narrows down to 3-4 common applicant types given the job and field. If you know how to differentiate between those types, or have friends who are of those types, it's going to be hard not to make a close guess.

If you want to take on the global MBTI cabal it's important to learn the game IMO. The obvious weaknesses will become your friend rather than a point of defense to get intense about. Less MBTI-sucks and more MBTI-meh.

It's also available in other disciplines, e.g. I once took a course on how to determine personality characteristics from texts and emails. Some obvious stuff, but also some really fascinating ideas in there.

physical health conditions, context of the meeting, significant recent events and naturally, drug use, can all skew these kinds of interview classification.. not to mention motive on your part.. lots of good reasons to discard this kind of human classification as psuedo-science IMHO

Who is trying to use it as a science? That wasn't mentioned anywhere. Of course there are millions of factors. Usually the interesting ones call for follow-up thinking or discussion, not outright classification...

Classifying humans into hire or no-hire is literally the point of every recruiting process. I’ve heard that random selection is as good as various interviewing techniques, but I have to admit I’m skeptical. Though I do agree that doing better than drawing lots should definitely be table stakes for any hiring or promotion process.

It does help that like 50% of people fits one of 4 types in the first place :)

Depends on the workplace for sure

> If you know how to differentiate between those types, or have friends who are of those types, it's going to be hard not to make a close guess.

But it's still a guess. You don't actually know.

But it's irrelevant in a sense. As you say, there are so few types that it's not hard to make a better-than-chance guess for pretty much anybody you meet. As a job applicant, this is no different than what I expect -- the interviewer is going to be making a subjective assessment of me and how well I would fit into the team.

I wouldn't ever take an actual personality test for employment, though, because a company's willingness to engage in straight-up psuedoscience as a factor in making important decisions tells me something important, and unflattering, about that company.

Umm, three-letter agencies in the US will send you through personality/mental testing & psych evaluation. They don't want treasonous thinkers after-all.

I just come out and say it? There’s nothing wrong with knowing you are a certain type.

At least it’s helpful for me to point at the ‘challenges’ section and tell people ‘I do this, please keep poking me until I give you attention’.

In the same way it’s helpful to have a literal definition of how other people think, because the idea that someone might deliberately go with a suboptimal idea because they value peace is absolutely foreign to me.

Recently in startups I’ve been a part of it’s become a bit of a fad to have a short write up called “how I work” which is basically a treatise consisting of that person telling everyone else how they interact with the world. I’ve found it refreshing, actually.

I only ever saw one of those being posted to hn quite some time ago. I must admit, that I found this specific example quite disturbing.

The implied undertone was that all others should accommodate the author and change themselves to better interact with the author so that his needs were met and he could be a productive member of the work force.

But what does that imply the other way around? If I were to write a play book like this, were this person to also adapt to my ways/wants? Or would this be too much to ask?

Working in any professional environment to me implies adapting to others around at least a bit (without loosing what makes out our personality). Out of respect to other human beings alone I think this is decent human behavior.

But as said, to me these writings sound like excuses to expect one sided adaption and I could say "pampering". But maybe that is just me.

I think it may be you feeling overly cynical.

I was using this style of enquiry with new hires 20+ years ago as a natural step to ensure we would get the best out of them - it just seemed like an obvious thing to do.

I don't like sticking square pegs in round holes so if by understanding, and being able to accommodate, personal characteristics, we can make the person more comfortable they'll generally contribute more, faster, and better.

You hate travelling in rush-hour? fine, set your own hours to fit in with the team requirements.

E.g. for myself I'd say: "No distractions - if I'm obviously focused on something do NOT disturb me - send an email" and "I'm productive when my brain gets intensely into something - when it doesn't I don't sit around I go do something else" and "I work better in darkness or dim light, or overnight" and "Sometimes I need to do intense random brain-storming sessions to clear the crap out my head".

Sure, I think it's OK to simply be of a type. You are also giving some simple affordances which is good. At the same time it's a pretty tricky and intriguing subtopic within personality type theory.

If you decide to stay on your type-script, your life will be more repetitive than it otherwise would. Many of the same problems, repeated. Your preferences will be less flexible by definition, so your scope of decision-making and even perceptual skill will be limited by subconscious pressure inputs, for example.

Also, you can more readily be manipulated by those who understand your blind spots better than you do. (This makes some people angry, but IMO it's better to embrace it and find a way to work on those)

However, to transcend one's own type requires intense learning, growth, and therefore stress. And the concepts here are so new that there is very little support available should you decide to really go in this direction.

Anyway. Personally I can understand either way. But the theoretical answer to "is having a personality type a problem" is both a hard no and a hard yes. This applies both for yourself and others as they interact with you.

Personally, I dislike having labels on myself that describe behavior whether it be pseudo-science or science-science because I find myself "role-playing" those labels and semi-consciously using them to guide actions. Even for medically diagnosed disorders I'll end up unconsciously thinking "Well of course, I'm going to do X because I have disorder Y/personality type Z".

This is easily one of the best comments in the thread, nice job being authentic to your experience! :-)

BTW have you ever gotten into acting, even on the side? Asking because your comment reminded me of some people I've known with similar experiences.

Thank you! I've never been much for acting save for a brief foray in elementary school, during which I found out that I don't particularly enjoy trying to act out a character.

Well, of course you'd say that! You're a Label-Rejecter!

> here’s nothing wrong with knowing you are a certain type.

Except the Myers-Briggs types are meaningless.

> the idea that someone might deliberately go with a suboptimal idea because they value peace is absolutely foreign to me.

That seems like you're lying to yourself. Everyone goes along with tons of suboptimal ideas or has enough money and power that everyone does what they want or is insufferable and everyone avoids. You could be in the latter two categories, but that doesn't seem likely.