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[AngleWyrm]

Starting a game with an embark profile does not retain the actual dwarf personalities, names, or job names. This could be improved by saving a random number seed that generates the embark dwarves, as well as the nicknames and job names:

[PROFILE]
  [TITLE:PARTAY]
  [SEED:123456789]

  [NICK 1:Jack]
  [JOB 1:Lumberjack]
  [SKILL 1:WOODCUTTING 5]
  [SKILL 1:ARMOR 2]
  [SKILL 1:AXE 2]
  [SKILL 1:ANIMALCARE 1]

Also, don't know how it's done, but if the starting geer is randomly decided, it could also be based on the embark seed.

[Kilo24]

In the future, I'm pretty sure that each dwarf is going to have concrete histories tied to the surrounding world, so the embark profile will be only able to retain those traits which don't affect and aren't affected by their history.  Which, when DF gets into its prime, won't be many.  In light of that, I don't think this suggestion is worth it because it'd be overwritten in the future anyway (and Toady'd have to code in half-generated dwarves).

I'm pretty sure that starting gear is determined by what your civilization has access to.

[AngleWyrm]

That...really doesn't help the embark situation at all. Currently there's no reason to use the Embark Profiles, because the guys all get set to Peasant, but have labors and skills allocated, and personalities don't match the labor/skill allocation. Which basically defeats the whole point of having personalities in the first place. Why go to all that trouble to carefully craft a dwarf history if he's just going to get a job placement by dice roll?

What's that? Make the best of it? Why thank you, I will: All that stuff about drawn from the environment relies on an environment that was itself assembled from random numbers. You can even go set the random numbers and regenerate the exact same universe, same history, same names, same places, same monsters...I'd like to have a little less of that; instead of the exact same universe, just identical dwarves for an embark profile. They could be easily grafted onto any history currently in place.

How do you suggest the situation be resolved between having a pre-chosen skill & labor set and random (probably unsuitable) personality auto-assigned to it?

[Kilo24]

How do you suggest the situation be resolved between having a pre-chosen skill & labor set and random (probably unsuitable) personality auto-assigned to it?

I think I spoke a bit ambiguously here - many of the bits of history (gods they worship, the civilization they come from, likely their genetics and ancestry, where they're coming from to start up a fortress and for what reason) will be generated in accord with the world that you're in, not purely randomly.  If you have new personalities forced on them, it could conflict with their previous decisions.

But I'm guessing that there will still be a large amount of control over what skills they start with, what stuff they bring, and other things which are more directly useful for the player, mainly because it's more fun for the player and it doesn't tax reality too much.  And even if profession is "randomly determined", it won't be a simple matter of rolling a 100-sided die- it'll be a case of what events led to them picking that profession (which is going to take a while to get DF to that level, and until then we'll still be customizing our dwarves' skills.)

Also, personality shouldn't be so simple that there are traits which directly correspond to "good glassmaker/bad glassmaker."  I'd guess that any dwarf without severe mental issues could have any skill to do any job pretty well (otherwise it'll become a game of micromanaging personality traits, which few fans would find fun.)

So to answer the question: that situation won't happen in the first place, so it doesn't need to be fixed.

[Pilsu]

There are some personality traits and likes that improve the quality of your work but they're not really necessary. As for the skill problem, it's always an option to keep the majority of the population as peasants. The fact we have an actual skill for farming complicates that a bit (and makes no sense) but it'd still be sufficiently believable without hampering the game itself. Certainly better than every village having a dozen mechanics.

Being able to choose specific dwarves would be useful though, if for nothing other than to make them absolutely hate each other from the get-go. Good times.