> "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.