Introduction

$\"\"$ Has it ever happened to you that in spite of your remarkable resume, you never got that job! You have a degree and many years of experience in your job role but that promotion still eludes you. Many believe that career success is strictly a result of talent, drive, and skill set.

But have you ever wondered whether factors unrelated to your work performance, such as personal appearance, influence your chances for advancement.

The trigger for this article was the viral series that has been floating this week on Whatsapp groups. The gorgeous Avantika (played by Tamannaah Bhatia) in Baahubali -2 was described as the beautiful HR who lures software engineering freshers from campus into joining the IT Company. It made me ponder deeply on the perception around beauty and its role in your interaction with stakeholders on the work front.

We like to think that we have moved beyond this era when the most desirable women was the beauty queen. But we haven’t. Every day we make assumptions about the banker, the salesperson, the waiter because of their looks. People seldom look beyond the pleasing façade- the superficial attractiveness.

There is a sea of information available online on this compelling question: Do looks affect getting hired, getting promoted, and making more money?

Attractive wins and ugly loses in today\’s rat race

In her column titled “Attractive wins and ugly loses in today\’s rat race”[i], Catherine Hakim argues that in the perfect Utopian world, meritocracies were supposed to champion intelligence, qualifications and experience? But in the real world, physical and social attractiveness do deliver substantial benefits in all forms of social interaction – making a person more persuasive, able to secure the co-operation of colleagues, attract customers and sell products.

She coined the term ‘erotic capital’ to cover a mixture of beauty, social skills, good dress sense, physical fitness, liveliness, sex appeal and sexual competence – a combination that makes some people attractive to colleagues, friends, business contacts and partners. These people smile at the world and find that the world smiles back and remembers them.

‘Plainness penalties’ and ‘beauty premiums’

There has been a lot of research on whether there is any correlation between appearance and career advancement. Americans in particular have done a lot of research into this subject.

Studies have shown that attractive people are usually hired sooner, get promotions more quickly, and are paid more than their less-attractive coworkers. (Daniel Hamermesh, University of Texas at Austin and author of the book \”Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful.\”)

He euphemistically described the appearance-based financial advantage/disadvantage as a \”beauty premium\” and “plainness penalty”.[ii]

In his study, he asked participants to rate the attractiveness of people on a series of photographs. He then compared the ranking with the salary figures of the test subjects. Respondents were classified into one of the following groups: below average, average and above average.

It was found that \”plainness penalty\” is 9 percent and that the \”beauty premium\” is 5 percent after controlling for other variables, such as education and experience. In other words, a person with below-average looks tended to earn 9 percent less per hour, and an above-average person tended to earn 5 percent more per hour than an average-looking person.

For the median male, the respective penalty and premium was ~ $2,600 and $1,400 p.a. The corresponding penalty and premium for the median female worker are $2,000 and $1,100.1 (working in 1996, full-time)

Beauty- the hidden persuader

As far back as Plato in ancient Greece, he wrote about the ideal proportions of a woman’s face. Today, science has demonstrated that symmetry has been proven to be inherently attractive to the human eye, in terms of the similarity between the left and right sides of the face. (Charles Feng, Stanford University, Journal of Young Investigators)

When making decisions, people are influenced by a variety of factors that are explicitly conscious, tacitly conscious, and unconscious. So maybe, the plausible explanation is that personal appearance falls into the subliminal judgment part of the brain. The analogy worth mentioning here is that of automotive companies placing bright red convertibles in the showrooms, only to sell white sedans. “In the same sense, a woman’s personal appearance is a hidden persuader. Nobody will admit that something as trivial will impact their decision-making process… but it does.”

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but maybe, most beholders view beauty similarly.

More research to go

Good looking people may benefit from a ‘beauty premium’. Facial attractiveness is important in determining people’s occupational prestige at the beginning of the career as it is in the middle or at the end.[iii] (Gundi Knies, Essex University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research)

Women wearing more makeup were judged to be more competent than those wearing less makeup or no makeup. Makeup was found to increase people’s perceptions of a woman’s likeability and trustworthiness as well.[iv] (Harvard University, Boston University, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers)

In a study on how facial appearance affects excellence in a job interview, it was found that people with facial blemishes and “disfigurements”—birthmarks, scars, blemishes—were more likely to be rated poorly by their interviewers. They recalled less information about competent candidates because they were distracted by characteristics on their face, it decreased their overall evaluations of them. Despite maturity and experience levels, it is still a natural human reaction to react negatively to facial stigma (Looks do matter – Rice University)[v]

To know whether women think their looks are important at work, dermatologist and author of Skin Rules: Trade Secrets from a Top New York Dermatologist, Debra Jaliman, says that many of her patients spend substantial sums of time and money to try to look younger and better, specifically because they believe it affects their chances for job advancement.

The possible explanation for this

No matter what the research says, you would invariably run into stiff opposition if you make a statement that a woman’s personal appearance influences decisions around hiring and promotion.

Maybe due to the myths and fairy tales throughout our history, people tend to think that more attractive people are also happier, outgoing, successful, kinder and have more positive traits.

Maybe beauty may just reflect self-esteem. Perhaps people’s self-confidence manifests itself in their behavior, so that their looks are rated more highly, and their self-esteem makes them more desirable and higher-paid employees

Another possibility is that beauty and the attractiveness of one’s personality are positively related, and that it is the general sparkle of one’s personality, not one’s beauty, that increases earnings.

The Other Side of “Pretty”

So is plastic surgery the way out? No way. The question of personal appearance is a double-edged sword for women—if women are too attractive it can work against them

They are sometimes not taken seriously, by men and women.
Co-workers might have assumptions as to how you got your job, which means that you have to work even harder to prove yourself
Experts cite examples where many women who express jealousy and envy toward other women based on their appearance. Based on this jealousy, some women use their authority and influence to suppress other women in the workplace rather than helping them to advance. This “work-life jealousy” Can be quite a liability

Final Thoughts

Whether we like it or not, and whether it’s less a case of cause and effect than correlation, research shows beauty matters; it pervades our society and how we choose our leaders, our loved ones and friends, bosses and co-workers.

The larger question is “Is it fair?” Isn’t it a form of discrimination?

Making judgments and decisions about people in terms of relationships, hiring, promotion and compensation solely based upon physical attractiveness—or even being influenced by it—is clearly discriminatory and ultimately harmful.

The question remains, what is to be done about it?

[i] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/attractive-wins-and-ugly-loses-in-todays-rat-race-6435454.html

[ii] https://www.stlouisfed.org/Publications/Regional-Economist/April-2005/So-Much-for-That-Merit-Raise-The-Link-between-Wages-and-Appearance

[iii] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2519415/Forget-university-Its-PRETTY-FACE-helps-guarantee-successful-career.html

[iv] http://career-intelligence.com/appearance-affect-advancement/

[v] http://news.rice.edu/2011/11/09/looks-do-matter-2/

About cajobportal.com

Who we are?

Founded in in August 2013 by a group of CAs and IIM Ahmedabad graduates, cajobportal.com is India\’s first recruitment website exclusively for finance professionals.