Persona training: how can MBTI be the key to finding the perfect candidate?

At HILL, we say we make people more successful. From both the applicant and client side, we've been working on this for over 30 years.

This week, my colleagues and I attended the second part of the Interviewing Skills Training (Kincskereső), the Persona training. In the previous Interviewing Skills Training, we learned how to interview candidates so that we can make a decision about them based on objective facts rather than subjective impressions. The MMM and STAR methodology is an essential HR and management tool if you want to build a good team. It teaches an interview structure that we can follow to accurately assess a candidate's performance without being influenced by our mood, or the urgency of the search, or anything other than evidence-based past experience and future potential.

An enhanced "master" version of the Interviewing Skills Training is the Persona Training, where we learn how different personality types behave in interviews and at work. Michelle Obama, Frodo Baggins, Queen Elizabeth II and Michael Jordan would arrive and sit for an interview, talk and present their careers in a very different way, wouldn't they? The achievements of all of them are undeniable, it is a question of what type of leader we are looking for, or in other words, what kind of character. In the rich literature of personality tests, the MBTI is a clear, tangible, and in a corporate setting, an excellent guide to the right team composition.

In Persona training, we not only find out what kind of character we are, but we also learn to see the people around us in this way, which can be a good tool in both the workplace and in our personal lives. How can Steve Jobs, a man who believes in numbers, speaks in facts, is born to lead people, is rational and rigid, and Frida Kahlo, a true artist, whose work challenges social conventions, lives in a colourful and sensual world where facts are only possibilities and creative redefinition of self is a daily occurrence, work well together? Just because you may be personally fascinated by Steve Jobs' precision and effective decision-making mechanism or Frida Kahlo's expressive and aesthetic creations and her endless attention to others, does not mean that they are good for the position. In an IT company, we would prefer Steve Jobs as manager and Frida Kahlo as life partner, in an art studio we would prefer Frida Kahlo as manager and Steve Jobs as life partner. This flexibility of thought is what we, at HILL, think we need to be good interviewers.

In the Persona training, we practice communicating with the 16 personality types of MBTI, learn to recognise personality traits from CVs, phone calls, cold calls, and first interviews, and to manage the process and later our team accordingly. Learning to recognise the signs and to switch roles quickly to accept and understand the other person's different personality can help us to communicate more effectively, improve our selection process and become more expert ourselves!

If you are interested in your natural and percieved personality type, how can you work well with your colleagues and bosses (and they with you!), you are welcome to join us at Persona training at HILL for a fact and data based self- and social skills workshop.

You can register at ibolya.toth@hill-international.com, our next training will take place on 9-10 May in Budapest, at the HILL office. You can also enquire about later dates at ibolya.toth@hill-international.com.