<p>I was reading a national study that was published online and thought it would make for a nice discussion here as I’ve seen items on this study appear in multiple threads. It looks like this was a study done via HR departments around the country. </p>
<p>Something I found interesting under how to not get hired… as I know people on here go back and forth about piercings and tattoo’s and does it really matter:</p>
<p>The best way to not get hired for a job is to exhibit one of the following qualities related to
appearance:
•Poor personal hygiene (90.8%)
•Inappropriate attire (74.8%)
•Facial piercings other than ears (74.3%)
•Inappropriate footwear (70.8%)
•Visible tattoos (60.6%)
•Unnatural hair color (39.2%).
The importance of proper appearance cannot be emphasized enough. When rating the impact of attire and appearance on likelihood of being hired, 80.6% of the respondents give a rating of either 4 or 5, great impact.
The influence of attire and appearance goes beyond the hiring process. It has an impact on the perception of one’s competence. Using the same rating scale, respondents rated the impact of appearance on their perception of an employee’s ability to perform their job requirements. Over half (56.9%) assign a rating of 4 or 5, great impact.
Beyond inappropriate appearance, there are other things the candidate can do to ensure not being hired. The most frequently mentioned are:</p>
<p>•Not being prepared for the interview (30.1%)
•Being tardy for the interview (29.3%)
•Having poor verbal skills and grammar (21.3%)
•Not acting interested (18.8%)
•Being over confident (17.1%)
•Giving a poor presentation of one’s self (16.6%).</p>
<p>One young man I helped get an interview who had great experience was not hired because huge gauges (about the size of pennies) in his ears were found distracting and unprofessional to the nurses, who felt it would not project the appropriate corporate image for their organization. He also wore a diamond or zircon earing in one earlobe. It was too much for their conservative business and clientele.</p>
<p>I sometimes get on my son’s case about how he dresses for work but it’s kind of hard to get the point across as his boss dresses the same way. There are a lot of workplaces that are very casual in dress and appearance (I’ve seen beer fridges, ping-pong tables, free food, etc. as hooks to get people to apply for jobs). That’s the culture of the industry though. One can easily find pictures of Bill Gates (or many other tech execs) dressing casually for big business meetings.</p>
<p>I will pass the document on to the kids though.</p>
<p>The use of the internet is an interesting thing. In the professional world, you’re expected to be on call all the time and my son works nights, weekends and holidays when called on to do so. He only goes into the office about once a month these days so he has a lot of schedule flexibility but sometimes his manager or a customer wants something done at an oddball time and he will often do it on the spot. This is true where I work too. You’re expected to bring some kind of device which you can work on in case there’s something that has to be done and nobody else can do it.</p>
<p>Work and home life blend into each other in the professional world. I see many employers that have this expectation. I wonder if the folks that did this survey ask about over-the-top expectations of employees today.</p>
<p>My son’s friend tells this story about how he got his job. He’s an in an arcane, highly technical field and the job is very desirable and in a cool location. (I don’t want to be more specific, to identify him. ) He said he was the third choice for the job. The interviews were conducted by phone. The first choices went to Harvard and Cornell, IIRC. The son’s friend went to a state flagship. Choice number one was taken out of consideration because his social skills were so poor. He was incapable of carrying on a conversation. Choice number two was ruled out because when the employer called, he replied by saying something like this: “Could you call back later? I have some friends over.”</p>
<p>So Mr. Third Choice has a job he loves. He says the only downside to the job is that he knows he’ll never get a better job.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having devices at work. I have a work cell that i take everywhere as well. But I’ve seen people in office in meetings updating their Facebook status and texting each other.</p>
<p>The other thing is that many employees are expected to do more of the moving and other duties themselves. When H was working originally, he went to work in dress slacks and nice shirt every day. After a while, he and they realized that they want him to clamber around and potentially do some moving and climbing around and he started switching to jeans or khakis and polo shirts. That’s what he wears to this day.</p>
<p>S takes great pride and care in his wardrobe, and we suspect it was a large part of the reason he went to Thailand (to buy clothing that fits him without having to custom order or have it fitted). He wears nice slacks and long-sleeved dress shirts most days for work. He also wears dress shoes. He works on the East Coast, plus travels to Los Angeles and Orlando but always tries to look professional.</p>
<p>With women, there seems to be a LOT of variability in their attire. Honestly, many wear what I consider beach or nightclub attire to work. It seems very inappropriate to me, but I guess if their boss doesn’t say anything, it must be OK? In the public health field generally, attire is quite casual–cotton capris and T-shirts are not unusual. Some women show cleavage, which I find extremely unprofessional.</p>
<p>In cinema, the attire is really variable, depending on what aspect you are working in, from extremely casual to normal business attire. D is having a tough time figuring out what wardrobe she wants until she figures out what she will be doing.</p>
<p>We hire a wave of new grads every year, and at my company it seems like the younger people are dressing better than the older people-- excluding management, who dresses very professionally. Though, I think all the men are pretty much the same… it’s the women who vary a lot. A lot of the older women wear clothes that are too big and are a bit too casual. While occasionally we have a young woman whose clothes are perhaps a bit too flashy, to put it delicately, more often than not they are the best dressed people in our office. I must say, though, it is harder for the women to know what is appropriate-- a man has to wear slacks, shirt, and tie-- maybe a full suit with jacket depending on his department. For women, our dress code is really not defined beyond “professional” which means any number of different things to different people. </p>
<p>The device thing is interesting. I have a job where the unspoken expectation is that I will work 12+ hour days, we put in our expected hours at work and then we either work late or go home and remote in from our home computers. I’m not willing to do that unless it’s a special circumstance-- it’s an emergency, I am behind, we are shorthanded, etc. Eventually it will probably become a spoken expectation and at that point I will move on. But, thankfully, at this time I am not “on call.” My fiance, on the other hand, is always on call. He is one of the most important trouble shooters in his department, and he can’t take a day off without being called to fix a catastrophe-- which if we are not home means he needs to remote in over his iphone. Just the other day we spent an hour outside the elephant exhibit at the zoo because something went wrong on our day off and he had to fix it right then and there. But, his job comes with perks that make up for it.</p>
<p>I am underwhelmed by this poll. At most companies I have known, HR is largely administrative and advisory, with direct hiring authority only over secretarial-type positions. I did not interview with HR as an engineer, and did not meet with them one on one until I was already hired.</p>
<p>And please note:</p>
<p>
I think that the more likely reason is that HR professionals are not qualified to evaluate expertise in one’s field. Which is one of the reason engineers (at least) are not hired by HR. Indeed, engineering applicants are advised to avoid HR completely, and even internally engineering managers do not look to HR to feed them candidates.</p>
<p>I would also note that this is overwhelmingly a survey of small companies: 71% of respondents were from companies with no more than 100 employees (more than half of which had no more than 10!), and 67.9% were from companies with a 1-2 person HR department. </p>
<p>On the other hand, 60.7% were in the CEO or GM category, which I find interesting if only because I would not normally consider such people to be in HR…</p>
<p>I think about that blurring the lines between work and home time alot.
Seems like companies do enjoy getting the most for their money, don’t they?</p>
<p>Back in stone age, employees in my workplace (not managers) would clock in for their shift, work intensely and productively, and swipe out and go home. And get to be at home or on the beach.<br>
The IT folks always seem to be on call 24/7 for emergencies, and that definition is loose.</p>
<p>Now, the whispered rule if out of office is to check emails, dial into conference calls, show up for team meetings, prepare for presentations, etc.
I will gladly use my off time to catch up if I’m the one deciding to…</p>
<p>I find all the ‘out of office’ email replies from coworkers amusing…some go to such lengths to describe how to reach them on a day off that I wonder why they bother taking one.</p>
<p>Music, exactly. I always keep my work cell on and the others on my team don’t. They specifically asked me to keep mine on. I’ve been called in the middle of the night on more then one occasion. I’m also the only one without kids so I’m much more willing to be called off hours.</p>
<p>We are occasionally expected to join meetings on an off day but only if requested.</p>
<p>I always find it difficult to take off for just a day because when you come back you just have two days work to do. I figure if I’m going to take off it should be in weekly increments. That way someone has to do my work while I’m gone!!</p>
<p>I get called on my cell on my days off too… No matter what I put in my out of office email note. I had one Co worker who called me three times within an hour at home depot once. After the third time I told her I had to turn my phone off because I had stuff that I needed to get done.</p>
<p>I don’t think I could live that way. I do have work I do from home, but I do it on my schedule. I can’t imagine being on call 24/7, unless i’m doing a life or death kind of job. Which most of us are not.</p>
<p>It’s a grim trend, and there’s nothing unprofessional about rejecting it.</p>
<p>Probably not surprising that HR people place a high priority on appearance-type aspects of candidates, since they are likely only tasked with decision-making for jobs where there are no specific skills or knowledge required (other than jobs within HR itself). Given the absence of other criteria for selecting candidates, generic criteria like appearance and the like become the criteria for selection. When it is necessary to hire someone with specialized skills or knowledge, HR would not have a decision-making function in the interview.</p>
<p>Of course, what is unstated is that when there are no other criteria for selecting candidates, illegal (or often considered undesirable when not illegal) discrimination (e.g. race, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, etc.) is also more likely to occur.</p>
<p>fendergirl, I would have difficulty accepting the ‘request’ to answer a work cell phone when other team members do not. So, you’re OK with getting calls since you don’t have kids at home?? We have every variety of home situation in our group so it doesn’t come into play with us…kids, elderly parents, ill husband, employee’s own illness/disability, everyone has a challenge other than work these days!</p>
<p>garland, yep, me neither. I considered a move into IT land a few years back and decided against it. Happy I did. I’m intensely involved in some projects for a few weeks/months at a time but I’m never the one with the 3 am stat IT emergency.
My ‘real’ job is technical, defined work hours with occasional calls for help off shifts.</p>
<p>ucb, exactly. HR can screen applicants for drug use, criminal record, etc but has no idea how to select a new hire in a technical field requiring a specific skill set.
Or course, it is always great when we get a new worker that can show up for assigned shifts. :)</p>
<p>Edited to add: three new recent hires in my dept are EXCELLENT, all young 20’s. Strong performers with good interpersonal skills as well. So, I’m pretty impressed with new grads.</p>
<p>Our HR screens by resume for general skill set, education, age requirements, and then contacts by telephone for sort of an assessment. Then they pass along those resumes that make the cut to the managers for the short list, the managers interview, and suggest offers.</p>
<p>I have not interviewed ANYONE dressed inappropriately or anyone that has had visible facial piercings or tattoos.</p>
<p>True, men do not seem to vary clothing choices as much as women.</p>
<p>When there is no functional aspect to clothing choices (e.g. hard hats at a construction site, uniforms for police officers or team sport professional athletes, scrubs in medical situations), men clothing choices are typically the following (pick the appropriate level on the casual to dressy scale):</p>