Homogenised applicants only please

My youngest sister has just told me that unless I have Botox and get my hair cut short, I will never get a permanent job. On various levels this piece of advice makes me sad. Perhaps I am an idealist, but I have always believed that a person should be judged on their merits, on the skills they can offer in relation to a role, combined with their attitude and how that will sit with the culture of a business, rather than the decision being based on their appearance. Certainly, that is the approach that I have always applied when recruiting – in my opinion it is crucial to hire the best person for the job and ideally someone who can bring a bit extra to the role and organisation. In my time I have raised eyebrows by hiring people with tattoos, unusual haircuts, who can add to the diversity of an organisation by coming from a different socioeconomic, racial, or cultural background to the majority of staff or who can provide neurodiversity.?Of course, within the workplace, an individual needs to be appropriately dressed and clean, that is a given, but do we have to be physical clones?

There are so many who seem obsessed with the idea of looking like someone else – copycat clothes and hairstyles and, at the most extreme, cosmetic surgery. I was struck by the comment made by a contact on Twitter this morning in response to a post about an individual who spent $60,000 on 15 sessions of surgery to look like Kim Kardashian.

She said:

“We won’t be able to tell each other apart one day.” - @white_owly (aka Fiona Tribe )

Of course, the desire to emulate others is not a modern trait. It is quite widely recognised that the custom of wearing flamboyant, powdered wigs only became a uniform for high society men when King Louis XIV of France and his cousin King Charles II of England turned them into a fashion statement. It is believed that the 17-year-old Louis opted for wigs to hide the hair loss caused by the tertiary stage of his untreated syphilis. Thanks to the kings, wigs became the norm across most of Europe for all educated, middle class and aristocratic men.

Up until the seventeenth century, UK lawyers were expected to appear in court with sober, clean, short hair and beards. Wigs only appeared at court because they were being worn outside in polite society. However, by 1685, full, shoulder-length wigs were deemed crucial to proper court dress with barristers following the trend. They have remained part of the judiciary’s uniform up until today.

Perhaps as interesting as wigs is the use of beauty patches. These too really came into vogue from the 15th century onwards, once syphilis was rife and guns were used more often in warfare and skirmishes, resulting in people having scars that they wished to conceal. However, unlike wigs, they developed into a form of individual expression, with high society ladies and courtesans using them to enhance their features. A delicate dot near an eye or a crescent over an eyebrow were perfect to emphasise the pallor of a Restoration period face in full makeup.

In many ways, they fulfilled a similar purpose to nose rings or tattoos.

Whilst browsing the internet the other day, I came across some very interesting tattoos. They were intended to enhance or change the perception of scars from surgery.

I loved the fact that were all so individual and that they almost celebrated what had happened rather than simply trying to conceal a ‘blemish’. Each scar is part of a person’s life story and in so many ways it seems right to commemorate them. We are all individuals, with our own experiences and knowledge. The tattoos reminded me of the Japanese habit of Kintsugi (where broken pottery objects are mended with glue mixed with gold and then viewed as being even more precious than when they were first created). This concept has recently been utilised for an art project in Cambridge that makes a feature of cancer scars. A superb collection of photographs, taken by Ryan Davies, have been enhanced by the artist, Carol Holliday, who is also a physiotherapist and former University of Cambridge lecturer. She has applied gold leaf to the scars so that they are dramatically brought into focus as opposed to being concealed. These wonderful pictures can be seen at Addenbrooke’s Hospital until 9 October. And here is the picture of Fiona Carey (with her permission) to show you how amazing the works are. Fiona has coped with renal cancer since 2001, is championing change in the NHS and plays basketball for a national team.

These photographs honouring individuals and the respective life events that have scarred them are exceptional. All too often portraits are bland. Look at the profile pictures on LinkedIn, the majority are simple headshots, with dull grey backgrounds and a hint of a shirt and a smart jacket. There is little space for personality. It feels a bit like Huxley’s “Brave New World” where individuality is seen as being incompatible with happiness and social stability, because it gets in the way of the smooth running of the community. ?It does seem to me that the world is contracting in many ways, and appreciation of the diversity of human appearance is one of these areas; another is the way in which individuals can communicate with companies. This is perhaps exacerbated in some instances by technology – back to the personal image and impact advice as recommended to me by my sister at the start of this post. Another piece of her counsel is that I should remove all dates that start with 19 from my CV as well as anything I might have done prior to 2000, to outsmart the applicant tracking system (ATS). To me this feels disingenuous. Throughout my career, when I have met people to discuss opportunities, I have been amazed by how many interviewers want to talk to me about the fishing school I founded and ran to finance me through university. Yes, it was quite a while ago, but it does demonstrate that I have an entrepreneurial streak and was problem solving from an early age, as well as being organised and capable of marketing with great effect to a global client base. All valuable skills, even now.

Most large corporations now use applicant tracking systems to facilitate recruitment – candidates are expected to enter details about themselves into a pre-determined format. This is both cumbersome and hence risks putting people off, especially those who don’t really need a job and therefore cannot be bothered to make the time required, but do have the skills that an employer seeks. My friend Katrina Collier has written a superb book on this that I highly recommend to you, called the Robot-Proof Recruiter (the second edition came out on August 3rd and it is an excellent read). She is an advocate for a human-powered approach in the hiring process with some excellent advice on how to get the people you need, especially for those hard-to-fill roles. It is important to realise that not everyone fits neatly into the box – for example both my sons took Pre-U exams instead of A Levels or International Baccalaureates – Pre-U’s seldom feature in a drop-down list and hence there is little way that my sons can input their qualifications. This will become more complex for them in the future as Pre-Us are being discontinued, with the last exams taking place in June 2023. Sometimes boxes are created that are not of value or required. Frequently roles are advertised as requiring qualifications that are not necessary for the position, such as degrees. Many people in recruitment would do well to give the positions to be filled and actual skills required a bit more thought, as well as being brave enough to be a bit more creative with candidates. Being a stickler for sectoral expertise might lose you a star performer.

The dichotomy between systems and individuals wanting a neat, homogenised approach, with candidates able to be cleanly compartmentalised, and the increasing number of personal posts and articles, particularly on LinkedIn, that try to show individuals’ weak and human sides is not lost on me. I loved the spoof post by David Rolls that is a satirical take on a CEO who posted a picture of himself weeping after making staff redundant. Weirdly, the “I need to be seen to be doing the same as everyone else” approach seems to be a driver for theses huge number of confessional and show-I-am-vulnerable posts on social media. Perhaps we have had too little actual human contact over the past few years, thanks to the pandemic and the on-going low take-up of going into the office when working from home is an option (at present a typical UK worker is going into the office less than 1.5 days per week according to Advanced Workplace Associates survey of 50,000 workers).

Humans have a need to be social (even the introverts among us) and one of our behaviours when we are with someone we like, or whom we want to like us, is “mirroring”. That is that we tend to subconsciously mimic the gestures of others. It is a behaviour that probably originates from when we needed to signal to tribe members and strangers that we were not a threat in order to survive and evolve. Our neurons responsible for recognition and the interpretation of expressions make us pull faces (you did it as a baby, copying others’ expressions and sounds, as part of your development before you could even talk). We find other peoples’ responses contagious – if someone starts laughing the group mood is usually enhanced and frequently people with them often start chortling too, similarly, a very morose colleague can bring you down. It is our inbuilt desire to mirror that makes yawns contagious. Although our inclination to mirror is impacted by numerous factors – our education level, cultural environment, and upbringing – it is a trait we all have. People seem to be virtual mirroring on social media.?So, despite my championing the importance and value of the individual and my desire not to be forced into a predefined box (or having to amend how I look to fit people’s expectations), there is a valid argument for trying to conform sufficiently that those around you remain comfortable with who you are and what you have to offer.

I do draw the line at Botox though…