Under Pressure: Does How You Look Affect Your Career Development?
A new year can mean a fresh start — and for many of us, that begins with our careers. Whether we’re eagerly anticipating a salary review meeting or applying for a brand new career opportunity, we’re used to putting almost as much effort into looking groomed as we do into nailing the answers to tricky questions. Selecting the perfect outfit, shining our shoes, styling our hair and, for ladies, making sure our makeup is on point is as much a part of pre-interview prep as thinking up an innocuous answer to the dreaded query ‘what’s your biggest weakness’. But should we consider booking into a cosmetic clinic before the big day, too?
Daniel Hamermesh, Professor of Economics at the University of Texas, found that good looking men earn a whopping 17% more than counterparts who are considered to be ‘below average’, while good looking women earn 12% more than their less-than-appealing contemporaries. And, strikingly, Hamermesh found looks-related pay discrepancies to be consistent across all professions, not just the ones we typically associate with good looks, such as sales and PR. For example, his research found that unattractive quarterbacks earn 12% less, and good looking economics professors earn 6% more.
As if that wasn’t worrying enough, it appears that the ‘halo effect’ of good looks doesn’t finish with your face. Height and weight also play a significant factor in earnings potential, with short men and overweight women losing out the most — for every 2.5 inches of extra height, men can expect to bank an additional £1600 a year, while a woman who is two stone heavier than the average for her height will miss out on almost £3000 in income a year.
So what are you supposed to do if you’ve got brains, but lack allure? Well, don’t despair. It’s difficult to isolate physical attractiveness as the direct, unique cause of these extra earnings, as good looking people tend to share certain valuable characteristics, such as confidence and charisma. And you’ve probably noticed that attractive people aren’t always the ones with the most perfect features — groomed, confident people who act like they’re top of the pile are often able to convince others that they are, too. So by taking the time to look after yourself, you can emulate many of the characteristics of beautiful people, while simultaneously boosting your attractiveness. White teeth, glowing skin, good hair and a trim figure all give the impression of healthy, youthful vitality, and they don’t require perfect genetics or invasive surgery to achieve.
Adding a few trips to a cosmetic clinic to your self-maintenance regime can do wonders for your look, without needing to go under the knife — which could explain the uptake in cosmetic treatments in recent years, particularly from men. The number of men seeking cosmetic enhancement has quadrupled since the 1980s, from 5% of new clients to 20% — and this has been attributed to an increased understanding in how appearance can influence perception, especially at work.
Whether it’s through having Botox to stay looking younger for longer, a HydraFacial to look fresh-faced in those early-morning meetings or having a spot of CoolSculpting to melt away the flabby areas the gym struggles to reach, cosmetic clinics allow you to achieve the best version of yourself, without surgery or downtime. Most of us don’t want or need a brand new face — we simply want to perfect what we already have. Feeling confident and feeling capable are linked in our own minds, not just the minds of others — just as we feel sharper and fresher after getting a new haircut, even if no one else can tell the difference, we perform better when we feel positive about our looks.
In this day and age, perception is reality, and there’s no reason to feel like your looks are holding you back. Making sure you take care of your appearance will give you the confidence to perform at your highest capacity in every area of your life — meaning you’ll never need to worry that the dazzlingly white smile of a self-assured competitor has lost you that big promotion ever again.
