PSL helps links of London to assess and recruit store managers

Links of London, the luxury jewellers, has used a psychometric test to profile the characteristics and personality traits of its ideal store manager.


With help from assessment specialist PSL, the company has used this profile as a benchmark for identifying its management development needs. The profile has also proved to be an invaluable aid for recruiting new store managers.

The store manager role is absolutely vital for us, said Rena Fairbrother, Retail Operations Manager at Links of London. We have to have people in place who can manage clients, motivate their teams and grow the business.

Links of London arranged for its 20 UK store managers to complete PSLís Occupational Personality Inventory (OPI) online. The OPI is a general personality questionnaire which measures 25 factors such as extroversion, emotionality, energy and openness to experience.

The results showed that the companyís ideal store manager had characteristics such as confidence, competitiveness, analytical thinking and an ability to motivate a team

PSL has considerable experience in the assessment of retail branch managers, said Rena Fairbrother. Using the results of the OPI test, we were able to give each manager an insight into his/her personality traits and preferred way of working. This resulted in an interesting dialogue with each person about their training and development needs. This exercise really helped each individual to make positive changes to the way they work.

Links of London is now using its ëideal manager profileí to save time and to improve the effectiveness of its store manager recruitment.

Interviewing candidates is a very time-consuming process, so weíre using the optimum profile to help filter out people who would be inappropriate in the role, said Rena Fairbrother.

Links of London plans to use psychometric tests to recruit and develop other roles within the business.

Getting the right people and retaining them are two of our major challenges, said Rena Fairbrother. PSLís psychometric tests have certainly helped with this and we will use them again in the future.