Thread by @SarahADowney

The @HBO documentary "Persona" (mostly on Myers-Briggs, AKA the #MBTI) was disappointing, woke, and poorly researched. Its main thesis appeared to be "using personality differences in hiring is amoral and always leads to bad outcomes." 1/9

Objective reality check: not everyone is equally good at -- or happy doing - -every job. And not every job appeals to every person. Personality variations are an easy, legal, and intuitively understandable way to explain these differences. 2/9

E.g., an introvert like me is far less likely to be thrilled about working in a busy sales floor with tons of personal interruptions. An extrovert who thrives on social interaction likely wouldn't be a great solo lab researcher. 3/9

The documentary shows a nonprofit coaching job seekers to basically lie on personality tests to appeal to hiring managers, which is terrible advice. In most cases, manipulating your answers is obvious in the data and makes you appear inauthentic and untrustworthy. 4/9

I'm guessing this nonprofit's intentions were good, but their advice was shoddy. There's no "right" way to take a personality test, just like there is no "better" personality overall. But there are better and worse personality types *for certain jobs.* 5/9

Then the documentary tries to say that the entire MBTI is racist because one of its founders wrote a fiction mystery/horror book in the 1920s in which some of the characters in that book were racist. I'm sorry, what? 6/9

The doc gets "experts" to complain about personality tests in hiring who make absurd assertions like "a child's job is predetermined from the time they're 7 years old," without citing anything. You get the sense these people are angry about being unhirable themselves. 7/9

A company's culture is its personality. Certain people are better fits for those cultures than others, and personality is a great way to find those fits. It's as if the filmmakers take issue with the core idea that hiring stronger candidates means not hiring weaker ones. 8/9

It was a missed opportunity to talk about how personality tests like the MBTI, the Big 5, and the Enneagram are *helping* so many people, how they work, and the many brilliant content creators, therapists, and coaches using them. 9/9