Are you a personality hire?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The trend has taken off on social media as it's resonated with office workers around the world.

So what value does an extroverted colleague bring to a company?

And is it fair, or even legal, for businesses to recruit for specific personality types?

Produced and presented by Imran Rahman-Jones

(Image: Two colleagues laughing together. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Imran Rahman Jones. Today.
0:10.8	Imagine the scene. You're in the office. Your deadline's getting closer and closer. The whole team is
0:17.1	working at 100%, squeezing everything they can out of the last few hours before you have to
0:22.7	submit your project. The temperatures rising. What do you do? Hi guys. I'm sorry, I'm late.
0:31.7	You look gorgeous. How are you? I'm very stressed out. We have the big presentation today.
0:37.3	Carolina and I have worked on this project nonstop. I mean, like, it's our baby.
0:40.7	Do you guys think we need to get an extension?
0:42.4	Yeah, 100%. We can't call Greg. He's so scary.
0:45.4	So Greg, it's our CEO. I'll call Greg.
0:47.7	Greg is so terrifying.
0:49.9	That's where the subject of today's program comes in, the so-called personality hire,
0:55.1	that co-worker who's able to use their sheer force of character to get things done.
1:00.0	Gregie!
1:00.9	Hey you!
1:01.6	Where are you?
1:02.5	How are your kids?
1:03.8	I didn't know that.
1:05.1	This daughter's doing the school production.
1:06.6	Amy?
1:07.4	I love Amy.
1:08.0	Oh.
1:09.0	But Greg, I have to ask you something.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.