Do looks matter in the City?
Mar 16 2010 Karen Higginbottom
Karen Higginbottom
Does being attractive and having symmetrical features affect your earning potential and career prospects? Research from the University of Florida has suggested that physical attractiveness does have an impact on earning potential. Karen Higginbottom explores whether looks matter in the City.
There is no doubt that image is important in the City. A perfectly manicured and coiffed man or woman sitting behind the reception area of an investment bank can make a good initial impression on clients. Looking immaculate and well-groomed is often part of the "invisible" job description for those finance professionals who have to deal with clients or represent their organisation. Do good looks really matter in the workplace, however, and can it have an impact on how high up the career ladder someone climbs?
Good looks linked to successA recent study from the University of Florida examined how intelligence, beauty and self-confidence affected income. Timothy Judge, a University of Florida management professor, looked at surveys of 191 men and women between the ages of 25 and 75 who participated in the National Survey of Midlife Development in the US. The researchers found that people with brains earned more in their lifetime than those who were self-confident or attractive. Although beauty was ranked third after brains and self-confidence, its importance to earnings was still troubling. Judge's study found that part of the reason for attractive people's success was that their educational prospects might well have been influenced by their looks. From an early age, studies showed that good-looking students received more teacher instruction and attention, while being punished less frequently, making them more likely to finish school and attend university.
Dr Nic Sale, head of diversity at occupational psychologists Pearn Kandola, said that being attractive could make a difference to whether you were perceived to be successful. "There was a piece of research done a few years back which showed that tall, good-looking men were more likely to be offered the job, and on a higher starting salary. There is a link between what people associate with being successful and good looks. What we know happens in people's heads is that they equate how attractive you are with what sort of position you deserve in life. For positions with a lot of power and influence you're looking for someone who looks successful, and that is often associated with attractiveness."
Sale argued, however, that more research needed to be done to investigate the links between physical attractiveness and improved career prospects. "In a 30-minute interview, it takes a recruiter four minutes to decide whether the candidate will be successful or not, then they will use the rest of the interview to find evidence to back up their beliefs. If someone is attractive, that can spark off a sub-conscious link to how successful they will be, and you can see how attractive people might fare better in an organisation." Sale recalled that one of her clients, a City-based global firm, told its female employees to wear more make-up to be successful in the workplace. "In other words, the message was to make yourself more attractive."
Organisations could address the unconscious bias whereby success was associated with being attractive during the recruitment process, said Sale. "It's purely about raising awareness of how your brain takes over. Although organisations do interview skills training, they don't cover unconscious bias in enough depth."
Dr Fiona Robson is a senior lecturer in human resource management at Newcastle Business School. She argued that the recruitment process could often be far more objective than it was 20 years ago due to the onslaught of employment legislation. "People used to be asked to send photos with their CVs but the recruitment process is far more objective now, due to legislation; the legislative element forces organisations to be more transparent about their decision-making criteria. A lot more decisions are made in terms of short-listing before you get to the interview stage. Sex and race legislation is forcing the recruitment process to be more objective."
The importance of a personal brandTessa Hood, founder of Changing Gear, a personal branding consultancy, said that the issue was not simply about looks, but was also bound up with the way that people presented themselves. "It's about their personal brand, and image is part of that packaging. City clients are trying to convey that their people are 'great people'. They come to me to talk about the way their employees are perceived in the marketplace and that's really important now in a recession." Hood is currently working with three of the large banks in the City. "All of them are fighting to make sure they are being perceived more favourably. We're all human and we look for that 'dazzle' factor. It's about doing your utmost to present yourself in the best possible light." She has observed an increasing trend, during this recession, for young men to have plastic surgery, as more firms have been making people redundant. "Lots of young men are having botox injections as they realise how tough it is in the market place and people are lining up for their jobs. They are getting their jowls lifted and trying to make themselves look a little younger."
There is an increased appetite for plastic surgery in the UK, although no figures exist to indicate whether financial services employees are opting for a chin tuck or an eye-bag lift more than those in other professions. The number of surgical procedures in the UK rose by 6.7 per cent in 2009 compared with the previous year, despite the financial downturn. The most impressive statistics were recorded in male surgery, where men were evidently feeling the pressure to look good. Male brow lifts rose by 51 per cent in 2009 while male facelifts went up by 23 per cent.
Penny Bennett, director of Penny Bennett Image Consultancy, said that the desire to look good was not merely vanity. "It's about personal brand and not just clothing and etiquette. Clients want to look good in the City and want to convey a sense of professionalism, and they understand their personal image is their best investment. It helps differentiate them among a group of equals."
Belinda Walmsley, associate director for Joslin Rowe, a recruitment firm for the financial services sector, countered that self-confidence was far more likely to differentiate candidates than good looks. "In an interview, if you're pretty and under-confident you will not do as well as someone far more confident but less attractive," she said.
How to address unconscious bias in recruitmentOrganisations can address any bias towards more attractive candidates by:
- Having effective training, which helps people to understand how their brain processes information in a faulty fashion, which can lead to biased decisions.
- Taking time during the assessment process and reviewing the decisions made.
- Setting the expectation that it is acceptable for the assessors to challenge one another, and then actually challenging each other.
- Simple instructions to form memory traces about being fair and not acting on biases during the decision-making process has also been found to eliminate the bias in recruitment scenarios.
Source: Pearn Kandola