Friday afternoon at The Times. People tapping at keyboards. The whiff of freshly consumed fish and chips hovering over the newsroom. And, somewhat unexpectedly, a Latvian business consultant called Maris Belte massaging my scalp, while remarking: “It is clear you are hypersexual. For you, both are very important – quality and quantity! Hahahaha!”

He turns and looks me straight in the eye. “Good thing you careful and do not do silly things, eh?” Both the voice and accent are reminiscent of Borat Sagdiyev. “You see, ears represent genetic intellect and yours quite big. Also your nose not too massive, which good. But you have problem: you see things in black and white. You cannot see the greys . . .”

I am allowing Belte to subject me to this character assassination in the name of “phenotypology”, a new technique that claims to enable people to assess personalities according to facial characteristics. It was developed by an Estonian biologist and psychologist and its proponents believe that it has the potential to help people to identify everything from ideal spouses to potential criminals. But it is the business application – it can also, apparently, help employers to pick good employees – that has bought Belte to spread the word in Britain. Though it seems that the initial response has not been entirely enthusiastic: he tells me that “less than ten” people turned up to the inaugural seminar in London.

I’m afraid I was one of the invitees who failed to show. But when Belte’s people wrote saying that he would like to visit and “explain in more details [sic] how phenotypology work”, and was willing to be tested, I agreed to a meeting, which began in the way all meetings seem to, with a Powerpoint presentation.

One of the first slides explained how phenotypologists interpret 140 distinct physical attributes when diagnosing personalities, though Belte said he was, thankfully, going to expound upon only two, the first of which was the chin. Putting up a picture of two dinosaurs’ skulls, he elaborated: “Every mammal has frontal teeth for catching prey. Therefore, people with big jaws are more aggressive.”

As examples of people with strong jaws/chins and correspondingly aggressive personalities he pointed to the Americans, the Russians, Michael Schumacher and Monica Lewinsky. And when we got to the infamous intern, he put up a picture of her standing next to Bill Clinton. “As you sees, she has massive chin. He has small chin. It is clear therefore she was aggressor, who wanted sex, not him.” To think that Kenneth Starr wasted so much time and money investigating what happened.

The next attribute was the neck, “a physiological shock absorber”, according to phenotypologists and, therefore, an “indicator of how much stress a person can absorb”. People with short necks, Belte said, tended to be intolerant to stress and conservative, while those with tall necks were tolerant and flexible. This time a picture of Elvis was displayed. “You see, he had quite short neck. If neck was longer, he could still be alive. He couldn’t resist stress, you see. Heart problems.”

On this bombshell we turned to the pictures I had assembled to test Belte - portraits of business figures he claimed not to recognise, being from Latvia. And things began remarkably well. Examining the facial features of the former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Belte immediately declared that he was “genius and very good at predicting things”. About Jack Welch, the lauded former chairman and chief executive of General Electric, he said phenotypological signals suggested “this man pioneer”. And a mere glance at Enron’s Ken Lay, a name synonymous with corporate abuse, produced the response: “He quite smart – but how you say word . . . cunning? Dodgy? If I were his business partner, I would be careful.”

However, things started going awry with Lord Browne, the former chief executive of BP, whom Belte identified as having “really good brains – from the ears”, but “not very commercially orientated”. Rupert Murdoch, meanwhile, was “really conservative man, and his first reaction to new ideas always negative”, an assessment that even his competitors would concede was untrue. And then there was Damon Buffini, the managing partner of Permira, Europe’s biggest private equity firm, whom Belte identified as “little bit hooligan, without commercial abilities, and someone who is obsessed with being recognised”. Which couldn’t be more inaccurate. Buffini, who has amassed a fortune of about £100 million, has a reputation for sophistication and rarely gives interviews.

Finally, there was my character analysis, the low point of which was being told that while I had “genetic intellect”, my brain was “not developed”. After this Belte dished out a little relationship advice – “my suggestion to you is to find partner with really good ears” – and suddenly left, leaving me to apply my underdeveloped brain to the question of whether I should recommend phenotypology to Times readers.

Obviously, there are some problems with it. It is, for instance, based on a series of logical flaws and non sequiturs and is singularly the most ludicrous recruitment technique anyone has devised since the Norwich branch of B&Q made job applicants dance to the Jackson Five’s Blame It on the Boogie during interviews this year.

Nevertheless, there remain three reasons why I find it difficult to advise against trying it out. First, judging people by facial traits is no madder than regarding a job applicant as a visionary because they cross their t’s, or rejecting someone for a position because they cannot answer the question: “Where do you see yourself in ten years’ time?”

Many traditional hiring techniques, from the interview to handwriting analysis and psychometric testing, are intellectually fuzzy, unreliable and pseudoscientific. Secondly, people already make irrational hiring decisions according to the way people look: studies show that you are more likely to get jobs and be paid more if you are attractive. And, thirdly, I simply want to demonstrate that big flappy ears and an outsized Punjabi nose do not necessarily mean that you are incapable of seeing shades of grey.

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