James Shimmen, Operations Director

James Shimmen

James’ role is to manage the GFB delivery team and ensure we deliver the excellent service we are known for by our clients. James takes an active role in the delivery of GFB’s technical projects, in particular the development of bespoke online psychometrics and surveys and is always keen to work with clients to develop new and interesting ways to measure people metrics and display these in new and innovative ways.

Alongside this James also oversees GFB’s product development programme ensuring that our suite of products is constantly up to date with current technical and market trends to ensure our suite of tools and services can continue to supply our clients with the widest and most reliable tools that work in ways that will be most effective for their projects.

James’ team is also responsible for coordinating GFB’s marketing and support teams, ensuring that we are spreading the word of GFB and helping our clients and assessment takers should they ever need it.

Away from work, James is a keen DIYer having now successfully designed and fully fitted 2 kitchens (including plumbing – no leaks yet!) as well as spending his lockdown months completing renovating his new house. When he’s not got a paintbrush in his hand James is a regular runner and swimmer.

Experience

James was a marketing executive for WHSmith news, where he was soon promoted to newspaper sales manager. He then moved to a sales development role for Coca-Cola, visiting outlets to support merchandising and promotion activity. This turned out to be role that James did not enjoy despite being successful and with the knowledge he now has from his psychometric data can understand why! This opened James’ eyes to the real value of using psychometric tools to ensure that organisations get the right candidate and that individuals also find the right role for them. James gets involved with the full range of client projects from the initial kick off meeting to providing the final results.

A recent project saw James developing a client designed 360 degree survey hosted on the Getfeedback servers and delivered to nearly 200 managers worldwide within a leading pharmaceuticals company

Another project saw James teaming up with another consultancy to provide the online psychometrics for their assessment centres. Test were set up to measure critical and numerical reasoning along with personality for 100 mangers.

Delivery of a company wide employee survey to over 15000 people across multiple countries in 30 different languages.

Qualifications

  • BSc Zoology awarded by the University of Reading
  • British Psychological Society Levels A and B accredited

  • Certified member of Mensa