
Happy hiring: The firm that recruits Mr Men characters - DanBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39653431
======
DanBC
Most important for me is:

> "We purely interview for personality," says Mr Timpson, who has been leading
> his family's firm for the past 42 years.

> In explaining the thinking behind this rather novel approach to recruitment,
> Mr Timpson, 74, says that while you can train someone to do a job, you
> cannot train their personality.

Timpson are good in the UK because for a long time they've been happy to
interview ex-offenders.

[https://www.timpson.co.uk/about/careers-at-
timpson](https://www.timpson.co.uk/about/careers-at-timpson)

> Timpson really are an equal opportunities employer. We consider anyone for
> our vacancies as long as they are able to do the job. This includes ex-
> offenders and other marginalised groups. We recruit exclusively on
> personality and expect all of colleagues to be happy, confident and chatty
> individuals.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandcon...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/10266250/Timpson-
has-key-to-giving-ex-convicts-second-chance.html)

> Susanna Stephens is laughing as she explains an early quirk of her job. "It
> did seem quite weird that I was going out of a prison to cut keys," says the
> 37-year-old who works for Timpson, the shoe repairer and key-cutter that has
> been a family business for five generations.

[...]

> But Stephens is no conventional recruit because, like 270 other Timpson
> staff, she joined the company from jail – for a while going to work in the
> day and returning to jail at night, under the Prison Service’s Release on
> Temporary Licence scheme.

~~~
Consultant32452
This reminds me of an anecdote about my grandfather. He reminisced with me
once about how he became a drafter at Martin Marietta (later Lockheed Martin).
They basically gave him an IQ test and then offered him the job. They then
taught him everything he needed to know about drafting. Not quite the same as
hiring ex-cons based entirely on their personality, but in a similar vein
imho. Oh how times have changed.

~~~
cylinder
IQ tests were common in recruiting for corporate America back then.
Unfortunately they were ruled as discriminatory so everyone shifted to
signaling with credentials from top universities which is much worse IMO.

------
sofaofthedamned
If you're not aware of Timpsons they do key cutting, dry cleaning etc and
these days mostly operate out of kiosks in supermarket car parks.

It's a pretty trainable job to anybody, and the ideal job for somebody who
can't get another one. I'm not sure about the Mr Happy thing though, because
i've met plenty of grumpy staff there.

~~~
isostatic
Mr Grumpy is also a Mr Men character. As is Mr Muddle. And Mr Tall.

~~~
sofaofthedamned
Good point. Didn't see Mr Surly Bastard Who Hates People By Default though :D

------
blowski
I found it a bit of an odd article. I alternate between Mr Happy, Mr Grumpy,
Mr Angry, Mr Sad. (Fortunately, I'm never Mr Tickle.)

While it was interesting, I'd hate for people reading this article to think it
was genuinely a good idea as a hiring practice. People are complicated, and
cannot and should not be pigeonholed into such simple categories.

~~~
anigbrowl
I think it's an extremely good idea. Work generally requires people to
suppress most of their personality, often tot he point of treating people as
completely interchangeable labor units, which is dehumanising. Acknowledging
that there are different kinds of people with different personal drives is an
excellent approach. Also, most people who grew up in the UK are familiar with
the Mr Men & Little Miss books, most of which treat of the titular character
encountering some problem in which their regular personality puts them at a
disadvantage.

Frankly I'd rather deal with someone who displays extensive familiarity with
the Mr Men than some buzzword-regurgitating follower of the latest management
guru or MBA fad who has mistaken novelty for innovation.

------
sandworm101
I love that they actively try to hire convicts for a job that involves cutting
keys. Im sure it is a non-issue in reality, i just laugh at the irony.

I wonder if they would be more or less likely to cut me a set of bump keys if
asked?

~~~
celticninja
I bet this is a non-issue, I'm not sure how many burglaries are carried out by
someone that picks the locks or uses bump keys but I'm pretty sure it is close
to zero. In addition you probably don't want to be burgled in this manner as
proving that you didn't leave the property unlocked would be difficult if
there was no forced entry, which would make any insurance claim difficult for
the property owner.

------
whatshisface
> _" We're not bothered by qualifications or CVs. We just look at the
> candidate and work out who they are, are they Mr Grumpy, Mr Slow, Mr Happy?_

If you consider that presenting a cheerful face for customers is part of the
retail job description, then the Mr. Men-themed interview is essentially a
work sample.

 _" If they tick all the right boxes then we put them in the shop for half the
day."_

Which is followed by a longer work sample, it appears.

------
hcs
> while you can train someone to do a job, you cannot train their personality

The idea and context reminded me of the identical Mr. Prestos in The Stars My
Destination:

[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2123](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=2123)

------
pavement
Does this use of personality differ from the qualitative "culture fit"
concept? How so?

------
rdl
I just learned which vendor I'll be avoiding.

Key cutting is _exactly_ the job I least want ex-convicts to do. It is low-
skill, so anyone can do it, but high-risk (you are literally giving your keys
to the person, asking them to convert them to a numeric code, easily retained,
and produce copies...)

(Obviously, I'd prefer an in-house locksmith or resettable locking system, but
instead, I use a vendor I've known for 20+ years who uses PGP to authenticate
orders.)

~~~
anigbrowl
You're either assuming the person cutting your keys also knows your address,
or that burglars are in the habit of walking round with a bunch of keys and
systematically trying them all in the front door looks of every house that
looks like it might be worth stealing from.

I'm not sure what is the point of mentioning that your physical security
vendor uses PGP other than signaling how awesome your security practices are,
but I guess since you're a vendor of security services you have a good reason
to advertise that.

No doubt you have your reasons for feeling prejudiced about ex-convicts, and
as a security professional you can leverage rational paranoia into cash.
However, it would be interesting to hear what sort of jobs you _do_ want ex-
convicts to do. It's easy to think of security reasons to disqualify people
from any given job, not so easy to furnish people with legit alternative
opportunities.

~~~
rdl
I'd disqualify convicts (meaning felony, and in this case, particularly
financial or access-related crimes) from physical security custodian roles
(such as locksmithing), probably child care, probably financial stewardship.
If it's a person with a drug crime history, probably nothing in the pharmacy
chain of custody. Nothing in law enforcement.

There are exceptions, and famously if someone's going to be providing quality
information based on a "nefarious past" like Frank Abagnale, sure, but for a
low-level clerk position, eliminating risk by barring 5% of the population
from 5% of the jobs (not even particularly good ones) is a reasonable
tradeoff.

I'd trust an ex-con with finances of the cash register variety, but not
unsupervised and unaccounted-for access to large amounts of cash. (It's not
something you'd want to have to trust an $8-12/hr employee with in general,
but in some cases it's unavoidable.)

If someone had higher skills (say, an auto mechanic who was also convicted of
a serious felony), the risk/reward of having that person working as an auto
mechanic is probably a lot better than a low skill person taking a key cutter
job vs. another form of retail job.

