Psychometric testing helps jeweller uncover management gems

Luxury jewellers Links of London is has used psychometric tests to identify the characteristics and personality traits of its ideal store manager.

With help from assessment firm PSL, the company then used this person profile as a benchmark for identifying its management development needs.

"The store manager role is absolutely vital for us," said Rena Fairbrother, retail operations manager at the jewellers. "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 PSL's online Occupational Personality Inventory (OPI) - which measures 25 factors such as extroversion, emotionality, energy and openness to experience.

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

"Using the results of the OPI test, we were able to give each manager an insight into their personality traits and preferred way of working," said Fairbrother.

"This resulted in an interesting dialogue with each person about their training and development needs... and helped each individual to make positive changes to the way they work."