Business · Arizona
Myers-Briggs and DiSC don't belong in hiring decisions, Hire Capacity's Harry Lakin says
The behavioral assessment consultant told the Phoenix Business Brief that employers should screen candidates only with validated, normative tests benchmarked to the role.
Nov 13, 2026
Popular personality tests such as Myers-Briggs and DiSC are useful for team building but the wrong tool for deciding whom to hire, Harry Lakin, founder of Hire Capacity, said on the Phoenix Business Brief episode on behavioral science and AI hiring.
"There are thousands of behavioral assessments available," Lakin told host Bryan Hyde. "Some people have heard of Myers-Briggs. Or DiSC. Those are 2 very popular assessments. The problem is too many people don't know what they don't know."
"And those instruments, while they're great team-building tools, should not be used in hiring and selection for technical reasons," he said.
The publisher of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator takes the same position. The Myers-Briggs Company says on its website that it "believes it is unethical and we do not condone the use of the MBTI tool for any sort of hiring or selection."
What employers need instead, Lakin said, "is what is called a normative assessment that has been validated by an independent third party, a psychometrician."
Hire Capacity starts by building a profile of the role. "We have a way, a process to create a benchmark of behaviors that someone who should be successful in that role will possess," Lakin said. Candidates are then compared with that benchmark, which he said also tells managers how to coach a new hire.
The company's assessment, called the Organizational Management System, or OMS, measures seven traits, Lakin said: assertiveness, sociability, patience, the need for structure, behavioral adaptability, emotional containment and creativity. None of them is good or bad on its own, he said. At a call-center client with a scripted process, for example, "people that are too creative tend to go off the script."
Lakin said assessing applicants is legal as long as the test relates to the job. "The courts have ruled on it, and so long as it is relative to the role, it's legal to do," he said, pointing to Griggs v. Duke Power Co., the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found employment tests must be related to job performance.
The method isn't perfect, he said. "We don't bat 1,000, but I think we do bat in probably the high .600s."
Listen to Harry Lakin's full Phoenix Business Brief interview on behavioral assessments, EQ and AI hiring.