(Video) The Ugly Truth About Beauty in the Workplace
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
Forget everything you’ve heard about beauty being only skin deep. Two recent Newsweek polls reveal that beauty may be pocket and career deep as well. Both surveys suggest dressing to impress today simply isn’t enough. Many managers evaluate the physical attractiveness of job candidates too.
The surveys reveal the following 8 ugly truths about beauty in the workplace:
1. Looks Matter at Work
Fifty-seven percent of the managers polled feel an unattractive (but qualified) applicant will experience more difficulty getting hired. Sixty-eight percent believe that once hired, looks continue to affect how managers evaluate an employee’s job performance.
2. Aesthetics Trump Education
When asked to rate nine character attributes, looks rated third below experience and confidence, but above where a candidate went to school and a sense of humor. With that said, it’s probably a good ideal to leave for last, or not include at all, that line in your Facebook bio about having a great sense of humor.
3. Resume Surgery or Cosmetic Surgery?
Fifty-nine percent of hiring managers recommend investing as much time and money doctoring your looks as you do doctoring your resume.
4. Caution Women – Being too Hot can Leave you Cold
Don’t believe that? Ask Debrahlee Lorenzana, the Queens woman who filed suit last month against Citibank, alleging the corporation fired her because she was “too hot.” Regardless of the veracity of the allegations, many professional women know all too well the importance of mastering the ability of looking attractive without being attracting. Sixty-one percent of the hiring managers Newsweek surveyed – 60 percent of whom were men – responded they feel it is beneficial for a woman to display her figure at work. Meanwhile, 47 percent of those same managers said they feel some women are at a disadvantage for being too attractive in the office. A winning case of “Damn if you do; damn if you don’t.”
5. Fat or Skinny, We Hate Hiring Fat People
Sure 75 percent of the American population is overweight – according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control – but that doesn’t stop us from discriminating against overweight people at work and in life. Newsweek reports “[2/3] of business managers said they believe some managers would hesitate before hiring a qualified job candidate who was significantly overweight”.
6. We Don’t Like Old People Either
Eighty-four percent of managers believe some bosses avoid hiring a qualified job applicant who looked much older than his or her cohorts.
7. In Certain Situations, ‘Lookism’ is OK
Sixty-four percent of hiring managers said they believe when a job calls for an employee to be the “face” of a company, hiring people based on looks is acceptable. But there was an inconsistency here. 60 percent of those same respondents said they would favor a law making it illegal to discriminate in hiring based on looks. When researched further, 46 percent of the public said they would favor a law making hiring discrimination based on appearance illegal.
8. Don’t Say FML Yet – Confidence is Imperative, Too!
You will recall that both confidence and experience ranked first and second on the list of the most important employee attributes. That said, lots of opportunities exists for the regular folks.
Categories: Color / Colour Analysis, Corporate, Personal | You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Please join in our discussion, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to (Video) The Ugly Truth About Beauty in the Workplace
Leave a Reply
[...] colors ages you without the gracefulness.. In a world where being young, intelligent, and yes, attractive affect your bottom line, the last thing you should want is a color next to your face that has you [...]
Jobseekers are clueless!
Times Of India (July 20, 2010) reports:
In Germany, resumes generally include a photograph and information considered taboo for employers in many countries, such as, date of birth, marital status and nationality.
A 2010 study by the private Bonn-based Institute for the Study of Labor showed rampant bias in hiring.
This prompted the German Anti-Discrimination Agency to sponsor a voluntary program under which company recruiters will process only “Blind” resumes that remove any reference to ethnic background or other personal information irrelevant to job performance.
Procter and Gamble and L’Oreal who have joined this program say the idea is to show to other recruiters what they were sacrificing with their prejudices.
No doubt a welcome beginning, but the unemployed around the world just do not want to risk their resumes getting summarily rejected because these contain “insufficient” information!
As long as job advertisements fail to clearly spell-out what information is “relevant” and what is “taboo”, jobseekers around the world would continue to err on the safe side!
With regards
hemen parekh
http://www.CustomizeResume.com
Jobs for All = Peace on Earth