“We hire by checking your MBTI type. We hope to receive applications from many people with extraversion (E) tendencies. Exceptions: ENTJ, ESFJ types cannot apply.”

This was part of a notice for a part-time job opening posted by a café in Mapo-gu, Seoul. People showed mixed reactions to this notice. Some said they could understand since the MBTI has firmly taken root as a common topic of interest, while others argued that it was just a leisure activity and that a personality test should not be applied as a recruitment standard.

After examining three online part-time job portals on January 27, we found a total of eight stores that stated the MBTI type as a condition in their hiring notices. They were all restaurants and cafes and most said they preferred “E” types. A, a café owner, said, “Since many people visit our store, extraverted people are faster in adapting to the work,” and added, “It’s better for people who get along well with each other to work together, isn’t it?”

The MBTI or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator divides personality types according to four psychological preferences. People are labeled as Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I) depending on the direction of one’s energy, Sensing (S) or Intuition (N) depending on perception preferences, Thinking (T) and Feeling (F) according to one’s judgment methods, and Judging (J) and Perceiving (P) according to the pattern of life one prefers. A total of sixteen personality types can be created with these four categories. For instance, if you are an ENTJ, you are extraverted, intuitive, thinking and judging.

More companies are also using the MBTI in the process of hiring employees. The food company, Ourhome began asking applicants to state their MBTI type and introduce their strengths and weaknesses based on the personality type when submitting their self-introduction essays last year.

LS Cable & System, a cable manufacturer, also had applicants include their MBTI type in their self-introduction essays since 2020.

Some job seekers argue that the MBTI is another burden. Gim Su-bin (21), a college student said, “I remember how surprised I was because they said the INTP type was the type that the people least wanted to work with during an interview for a part-time job.” She continued and said, “I heard that some companies made you write it (MBTI type) when writing your self-introduction essay, but I think asking your MBTI type for part-time jobs is going too far.”

Gim (28), who is currently seeking employment, said, “The CEO of one startup asked me in the final interview if it was okay that my MBTI type was at odds with his,” and added, “Now, I wonder if I have to study the MBTI type of the CEO before I go to an interview.”

Experts say it is inappropriate to use the MBTI as an objective standard.

Park Jin-young, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Medical School, said, “The questions used in the MBTI test are too simple. They don’t allow for answers in the middle, and they dichotomize personalities as either A or B,” in the journal, Skeptic Korea. Park further criticized, “It is a theory born from internal reasoning rather than one verified with objective data.” A representative of the Korea MBTI Institute said, “Since the free simplified tests floating around on the Internet are not the official MBTI test, it is not right to blindly accept the results.”