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

> 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...

> 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.

John Timpson (chairman of Timpsons) was on panel of this episode of BBC Radio 4's "The Bottom Line", that was when I first heard about them having a more open mind about ex-offenders. It's an interesting discussion:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04pr0xp

I never realised they hired so many people out of prison - Bumps them up quite a lot in my books, will try and consider them in future for more things!

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.

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.

I would expect the additional step of

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

is also very important.

> 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.

So it was just a really happy coincidence that the owners son (James Timpson) becamse the chief executive officer? ;)

I know you're joking, but come on, it's a family business c:

It's still first class hypocrisy.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

> it was genuinely a good idea as a hiring practice

There's been enough discussion about how fundamentally broken the current recruitment process is (in tech) that this doesn't seem much worse.

It's not any worse than other hiring practices, such as the use of Myers-Briggs types, which are thought of approvingly in the business community.

I've been at a workplace where I was sorted by the Dept head into a 'colour' category according to my personality, based on some bullshit test. There were 4(!) colours. I stayed for three months.

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?

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.

>"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.

> 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

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

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.)

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.

> asking them to convert them to a numeric code, easily retained, and produce copies...

This must be different from any key-cutting system I've ever seen. Any time I've ever gotten keys cut, the machine is setup with a jig, so they put the original on one side, and the blank on the other, and you trace the original against the guide, while the blank gets ground to match. I suppose they could cut an extra, but it'd be hard to do when I'm standing right there watching them.

Higher end key systems generally involve "code cutting" for making good duplicates, not merely copying.

What's the weakest link in your case? How resistant are your locks to picking? Can someone just smash a window or drill the lock?

I think I agree that if your threat model is targeted, pre-meditated entry then going with a company that has never had any problem may be the way to go.

I suspect that you've never visited a Timpson's, which are your general, run of the mill high-street key-cutter. You walk in with your keys, ask them to make copies, they cut them while you wait (and watch if you want), you walk out with your new keys.

For most people that's pretty much fine whoever is cutting the keys as they don't know where you live.

If you're paranoid and/or have threat models that include lots of things that your average man on the street doesn't have to worry about, then you should be cutting the keys yourself.