Job Interview Time – Boosting Your Degree

Your appearance and your overall gestalt can give you a chance at a job that another applicant with a better degree will not get. How can that be true?

Conversely, your degree can be better than an other, but they get the job, not you. And how can that be true?

New research has found that “overweight” men and women women are less likely to be successful in job applications than applicants who fall into normal weight range.

Also, the smell of cigarette smoke can be an instant interview-killer. If the interviewer is not addicted to nicotine, his/her olfactory sense is acutely repelled by the after-smell of smoking, or “ashtray-mouth.”.

And if obese people or smokers do actually get hired, on average they will almost always be paid less.

For every extra two pounds a woman carries, her average salary drops by more than 1.5 per cent, according to scientists at the University of Michigan.

A study— following the weight patterns and career paths of more than 6,000— found that the benefit of being thin was equivalent to an extra year’s education or two years’ experience in a job.

Obesity experts worldwide have long suspected that overweight people are generally regarded as fat and lazy. And smokers are regarded by many as careless of others and self-destructive.

A new Michigan study is the first to quantify the economic impact.

John Cawley, who led the Michigan study, said: “We have become a very image-conscious society which tends to make judgements about people increasingly on their physical appearance alone. The fact that weight lowers wages may become increasingly important over time, as the percentages of people meeting the clinical definitions of overweight and obese are predicted to continue to rise.”

In the British study, more than half of British men and half of women – around 20 million adults – are overweight.

Six million Britons are classified as obese and the number is rising. Elsewhere, like the USA, the number is much much larger.

Their job chances are reduced, in a time of growing competition for work. It has a disastrous impact on their futures and their families. In both health and in earnings.

And saddest of all, weight and smoking are volunteer conditions. They are personal choices that couldn’t come at a worst time. Employers increasingly have more and more choices among the work force, and be reject anyone they feel less fit or less in control of their lives.

Employers fear not only company identity issues, but also disability issues and huge health plan costs.

Obese people have advocates, who assert a person’s right to be obese. Like Diana Pollard, the national co-ordinator for Size, the “national size acceptance network”.

Pollard said, “Larger women often have to do the jobs that other people don’t want and that means lower paid work. They are often screened out at interview stage and in many, many cases, if they almost secure the job on the basis of their qualifications, the employer will then not give them a job, once they have seen that they are overweight.”

Yes, anyone can assert the right to be obese, or to smoke. And any employer can asserts the right not to hire them.

Who is right and who is wrong? The results are the same. They are bad. A great degree can often be ignored in such cases.

Right or wrong, discrimination against smokers and the overweight has dire personal economic consequences. But there is hope. Its something that anybody can change, if they face the harsh reality of hiring, if really want to boost their opportunities.

Why spend all that energy and time getting your degree, only to minimize your chances? Why cripple your degree power, with personal habits that reduce your odds of success?

Give yourself an advantage. Drop the weight. Dump the nicotine. Fight the weight and the addiction the way you fought to earn that degree.

Give your degree the presentation it deserves, and score the results you struggled to earn!

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