I’m on the record as thinking any picture or video of a candidate prior to a phone interview is a bad idea. Why? We all have some image in our mind of what the right candidate looks like. Maybe we’re thinking we want a sales person who looks like John McEnroe, or maybe we want an accountant who looks like Dwight from "The Office. In any event, we’ve all got our own vision going, which rarely matches up to the best candidate for a job.
Get the phone interview in, and the candidate has a shot to overcome whatever we’ve envisioned. Phone
interviews give you a great feel for the candidate’s communication skills, rapport-building capabilities and energy level, not to mention their qualifications behind the resume. With a positive phone interview, hiring managers are a LOT more open to the candidate, regardless of what he or she looks like.
Weight, as you might expect, plays a role in perception. Do companies discriminate based on weight? Studies say yes… From Mark Toth at the Manpower Employment Blog:
"Discrimination against overweight employees is more common than discrimination based on disability, religion, national origin and sexual orientation and only slightly less common than race, gender and age discrimination, according to a new study by Yale University researchers.
The study also found that women are twice as likely as men to face weight discrimination. Researchers found that women typically start experiencing discrimination when their body mass index (BMI) reaches 27 or higher, while men typically don’t experience discrimination unless their BMI is 35 or higher.
“These results show the need to treat weight discrimination as a legitimate form of prejudice, comparable to other characteristics like race or gender that already receive legal protection,” said Rebecca Puhl, lead researcher.
Federal law doesn’t prohibit weight discrimination. Only one state (Michigan) and a few cities (e.g., San Francisco, Washington, D.C.) consider weight a protected class, although a bill pending in Massachusetts could add that state to the list."
Couple of notes from my diary. First up, it’s good to see them use BMI, since that’s at least some quantitative measure on the overweight issue with candidates. Second, as someone who pays invoices from a medical plan, 27 is not a crazy type of BMI. I’m 6"2 and 170 pounds and would be called skinny by many, and my BMI is 22. I could easily add 20 pounds to my frame (all muscle of course) without being seen as overweight, and then by BMI goes to 24.5.
The world doesn’t need another protected class, it needs recruiters who can sell the right candidate regardless of appearance.
Here’s my final thought. Most of use who write to this site are recruiters. As a corporate recruiter, I have the ability to put a canndidate in front of a hiring manager without a phone screen. Unless a position is a very entry level gig, I don’t do that.
I want some buy-in from the hiring manager before they see the candidate. That way, if appearance is a surprise, they’re much more likely to work through that quickly and get right back to the skills and knowledge that matters. That includes multiple factors, on the fringe, that can influence selection – weight, attractiveness, hair style, nose size, etc.
Help them help you. And the candidate…
Weight is not a protected class, so it’s perfectly legal to discriminate against overweight people. Is it moral? That’s a topic for another day. There are positions in which appearance, including weight, can and should be considered for business reasons. Study after study tells us that “attractive” people are perceived as more successful. If you owned your own company and were putting your money and future on the line, what would YOUR sales person look like? Overweight? Probably not.
Neat discussion. Anyone read Trunk’s post on good looks lately? Really fascinating stuff (and not just cuz I’m good lookin’). No seriously, I was at the Startup Track at ERE recently and one of the tools being touted there was Visual CV. I think it’s really neat and a great improvement on the traditional resume BUT it opens up so many biases that you have no way of quantifying (not to mention diversity issues). There is one school of thought that says, the people who would scroll past a resume/picture because of the “look” of the candidate might just pass over them in the interview process as well. Can I say that HCI’s best salesperson is. . .not thin.
Bonita -
Agree with your thoughts, but to Maren’s point, if you go with that M.O. for every position, you’ll miss out on some great people.
That’s why I am a big believer of someone like you (and me) of doing a phone screen. It opens your mind before you see the candidate, and allows you to expand your vision of what success looks like.
Maren – I have a post on VisualCV over at the Capitalist next week. I actually like the tool, because I think the ability to show depth in project work and your portfolio can also help a hiring manager get around the looks thing…
Good thing I look like George Clooney….
KD
Discriminating based on weight would be like discriminating based on communication skills. (Huh?)
My point is this, both are “things” that could impact your ability to do a job well. Additionally, weight and communication are also “things” people can work on to improve. So if you feel like you’re being discrimated b/c of your weight… either change the type of jobs you’re applying for, or work to improve yourself.
Most likely it’s not one’s weight an employer is discriminating against; i’d put money on it’s the candidate’s self-confidence (or lack there of) that turns off a potential employer. It’s all about the “sell” in an interview, if you aren’t confident about the product you’re selling (which is you) no one will buy it. So if you aren’t confident in the way you look b/c you don’t like being over weight, it WILL impact how you communicate durring the interview – both verbally and with body language. So it all circles back to communication… not weight. So if you have a candidate (or you are a candidate) that feels discriminated b/c of weight… it’s really the communication skills that need an improvement (which ironically, living a healthy lifestyle can help improve).