Hiring manager here, private security industry.
I can honestly say, as M/33/straight, I’ve never been attracted to a coworker OR applicant. It’s just not how my brain is wired, I guess.
I have, however, given certain people further consideration based on looks. I look for intimidating. I’m a rocker type guy with long hair, beard, I try and have as much leather and metal draped over me as possible. It creates a certain sense of unease dealing with people; when you can articulate without saying a word, “I don’t exactly play by the rules,” you get an upper hand in some situations.
We had this one guy, he was close to 7’ tall, fat, big gauges in his ears and covered in tattoos. He also sang in a local metal band. THAT is my kinda guy. A hiring nightmare anywhere else, but he had what I look for; in a tense situation, are you gonna be able to give yourself an upper hand?
It certainly makes for an eclectic crew. I have two ex gangbangers. The other management were mortified that I hired them, but they’re two of my best employees.
Meh, I’m rambling, but yeah, you get the point. Pretty hasn’t ever been a consideration for me, at least not yet.
I have never hired anyone attractive, but I did almost hire one woman that was quite attractive for my dev team and I ended up hearing a bunch of grumbling from some of the guys (all married) for choosing someone that was more qualified.
Nope but I gave (mental) bonus points when interviewing someone for a paid internship because they had a section at the bottom of their CV that said “Interests: Daft Punk”.
I think you’d call it a culture fit.
In general, I hire caregivers for disabled people, and I’ll give a job to anyone who will do it for what we pay (about 20/ hour). However, the people get a say in who gets hired, and a few times, they have chosen to hire beautiful women. They never last, mostly because its such an intimate position, (you’re spending hours of your time one on one), and some of these people being cognitively impaired, they couldn’t help but make it weird.
I was a hiring manager for years and my store manager did this.
First 2 weeks as i was getting to know the crew, i noticed they were all in high school, mostly women, and on the better looking side. Then as the months we on, he put me in charge of hiring and i actually hired based on skill and personality since that’s what matters in retail.
He always had the final “approval” interview and i could tell he never liked the smart ones or ones that weren’t blonde and white. He refused to hire several of them till i reminded him we pay $9 an hour and we have to take ANYONE who is willing to work for such a poor wage.
I’ll never forget the last hire he did before i quit. He had this like 18 year old girl come in for an interview since she shopped in the store with her parents a couple days before. He hired her ON THE SPOT without consulting me and i wasn’t happy. The VERY next day, her parents send us an email saying she had a complete mental breakdown and is in the psych hospital being treated.
It is a conundrum with retail. In a bike shop environment, women are only 5%-15% of the market in objective unbiased total, (based on numbers from the largest wholesale distributors).
Women will buy from women in a bike shop but not from men in most cases. Likewise, the demographic of male cyclists that shop in brick and mortar retail stores, is very partial to female staff. Therefore, by the back office numbers, a girl is statistically far more valuable for shop staff in almost every circumstance regardless of personality, intelligence, or skill. I would like to say otherwise, but the numbers in the shops with ~60 employees across 3 stores and years pointed otherwise. The thing that really sucks is how women’s retail stuff for cycling is always a loss or breaks even at best. The lack of volume leads to major issues with overburden inventory over time. Overburden is why most nice shops fail within a decade or are a hobby business with someone willing to inject considerable funds in the $100k-$300k range to bail out the shop about once a decade. Every time a wrong part is ordered or a poorly planned size run of clothing sells lopsided, or some niche lineup of bikes is suddenly unpopular, it chips away at cash flow and eventually strangles the business slowly from the back office causing a default on a major distributor’s credit account. This causes all the mainline distributors to pull the shop’s credit for cash only access. Next preseason order cycle, the margins will be garbage and no popular products are accessible. No shop will last more than 2 years like this.
So like, I hired any female cyclist at a much higher starting wage. I was the Buyer and back office manager for the chain. From my perspective, I viewed women on staff like a life vest and triage. My job was to keep the thing alive for as long as possible without losing access to credit. Women were an opportunity to triage a large open wound where my alternative is to give up entirely on 5%-15% of the entire market.
Maybe that is an interesting counter perspective. I only cared about the unbiased numbers. In most instances I rarely interacted with these people. And at work, I have a strict policy of ‘never shitting in my own back yard.’
There was a Winn Dixie by my old house where the manager had a thing for pretty, young, white girls. Every single cashier was really young and really pretty, no exceptions. It was so obvious my ex-wife and I laughed about it all the time. Seemingly overnight, suddenly the cashiers were all ages, races and varying attractiveness. I would kill to know the story behind that.
Worked at Eskimo Joe’s in college and all the servers were white girls and insanely hot. Something changed and we got a single waiter and some not so pretty waitresses. I think someone sued them or tried to, been over 30 years ago, can’t remember.
I was a bar manager and used to get a flood of applicants every time I needed to hire people. I wasn’t particularly picky since I was always happy to train people up to my standards since I usually had to untrain bad habits anyways, so I would only schedule one interview at a time and generally just hired the first person I interviewed to save myself the work unless their vibes were off.
The one time I interviewed someone where I thought “damn he’s hot asf”, seemed nice, could answer my questions and he was experienced in the role, so I hired him on the spot. I have never had to fire someone so fast. Dude lost his shit at another bartender for bumping into him, I gave him a warning and told him it would be his only one. Shit happens, it’s a tight space.
Then a customer that was smoking in the alley after we shut asked him a question as we were leaving and he said “why the fuck are you talking to me”. Had to tell him not to bother coming in for his next shift…
Everyone who has ever hired an attractive person at least subconsciously let it effect their decision.
I agree.
I think people should change their names for similar reasons. If you want to get a certain job or whatnot, change your name as that is one of the strongest ways to create a similar bias. Like if I want to be an electrical engineer, change my name to Max Watts. I bet the bias that creates is equivocal; just on the edge of plausibly deniable consciousness.
I chose to wear glasses instead of contacts because people respect me more when I am wearing glasses.
I was responsible for hiring some folks for a commercial spot. So yes, I literally picked them out of a binder the company had based on looks. Then we slapped fake glasses and white coats on them to ugly them up into the world’s sexiest scientists. That day felt like it could have easily turned into a porno set.
Only that one time I was self employed.
Me, looking in the mirror
You’re too ugly to work here. You’re fired!
anecdotaly, all the guys who’ve been hired recently at our company have really nice butts, but I doubt it’s intentional lol
I get a lot of jobs that I interview for because I’m a solid 5/10. Then they get to know me and it makes them think I lied to them about my qualifications but no, they just equated average-to-medium looks with competence and neurotypicality
hah ! malicious incompetence. love it
Actually I’m just not good at things. Not even being malicious
Ugh can we swap? I’m so good at what I do, but the only jobs I ever get are when my credential speak for themselves so much that the interview is basically just ‘ok let me summarise the job duties; now let me know by Monday if you’ll take the job’. I’m not even ugly, just autistic and visibly queer.
How about I do your job interviews for you? then we like, hit em with “The Prince and the Pauper”
Fuck, maybe that should be my life calling
No, but I assume it’s why I’ve got every job I’ve ever had
You handsome bastard.
When I was younger, definitely. There is one job I didn’t get because one of the women in the panel immediately turned against me, so I suppose it had its downsides sometimes.
Not personally but my old manager certainly did. I really wish I had reported to HR but I was still new, early in my career and the company wasn’t very corporate - HR was just a lady who was an early hire without any real credentials.
He (my manager) would regularly hand CVs around the team to see if they were a good fit skill wise but would also search for (and print off!) any facebook photos he could find that showed skin. He almost exclusively looked for and hired women. He later got sacked for bullying and generally being very inappropriate.
I’ve never hired anyone.
But I take it for granted that in any public-facing position, the attractiveness of the candidate for hire will play a role, since it will also play a role in their job performance later.
