You can turn up for your Timpson interview with the world's finest CV or resume, and all the interviewer will do is work out whether you are a Mr Lazy (you don't have a hope), or a Mr Cheerful (you have a very good chance). "We purely interview for personality," says Mr Timpson, who has been leading his family's firm for the past 42 years. "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 they tick all the right boxes then we put them in the shop for half the day. That's it, I dreamt that up years ago." 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. And if you look at the continuing performance of the business, the Mr Men method appears to work rather well. Timpson, a household name in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, saw sales rise 8% to £130m in the year to September 2015, with pre-tax profits up 65% to £10.3m.
