Apparently if you are over a certain weight you are deemed unemployable according to some employers and members of the public.

This all stems from a interview I saw on the show This Morning about Jay Cole a woman who claims she is been discriminated against due to her weight. In this interview she claims that every time she has gone for a interview the interviewer has made suggestions about her weight and has refused her positions because of this. Then offers the job to other less qualified people because they are thin.

At first I thought this was a load of rubbish. I thought why should anyone be discriminated against because of this. After all this would be the same as saying they were refused jobs because they owned a cat, smoked, drank beer or any other lifestyle choices. Until the Employer openly admitted that she would not employ anyone who was fat.

Her argument?

Apparently this is all down to appearance. If a "fat", and fat is used in a broad sense because depending on what day it falls on the goal posts for been fat change, person walks into a interview they instantly hold prejudices against them. She admitted she feels fat people are lazy, hold no motivation, and untidy, don't look after themselves and are more likely to cost a business money.

This sickened me. How many skinny, shall we say, people do you see walking around unkempt, have poor personal hygiene, are lazy, unmotivated and unwilling to work? Why should someone who is thin be given a job simply because they are thin over someone who is equally or possibly more qualified who might be considered fat?

Then you get papers like the sun giving their usual knee-jerk reactions.

The sun

Urgh....

I should point out that this is not every employer or member of the public shares this view. but when it gets to places like newspapers and TV it makes people have these knee-jerk reactions.

Last edited by CritAnime on 28-Feb-2013 at 02:12 PM.

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@CritAnime

Fairly, or not, our societies do help to establish expectations. People that are extremely obese are thought of us lazy and uncommitted. Leaders of companies often realize that presentation is part of establishing expectation. They often take care to ensure they're average or trim and well primped.

This extends as well to others in our societies. Research has shown there is a relationship to ugliness and hiring. Make that person capable on paper and demonstrate themselves to be capable but really ugly they will tend to not be hired.

It's unfair clearly. People should be measured by their capabilities more so than judging capabilities by appearance. However, it does appear to be innate in humans that appearance is always, even if subconsciously, part of the puzzle.

I don't know if there's any sort of easy answer to fixing this.

Though I do thing realizing this is a step further into adulthood and thereby you can help to fix your own judgments. So welcome.

@CritAnime

Basically it boils down to this: Employers can pick and choose, (most) employees can not. This has in recent decades made employers exceedingly lazy when it comes to choosing candidates, using all sorts of idiotic criteria.

Example: Recruitment consultants using personality tests. Do they know anything about being an engineer? No. Do they pick the people who are best at engineering? Obviously not. Do they pick the people who are best at being interviewed? Definitely.

Recruitment consulting is big business. On one hand, you can hire yourself out to businesses to screen applicants. On the other, you can give expensive classes on how to bypass the screening process to the same applicants.

Sort of like a pharmaceutical company creating diseases or an anti-virus creator making viruses on the side. Except worse, cause they benefit from both actions directly.

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@olegil

An organisation I worked for provides the interviewers with a list of keywords to tick off during the interview.
The interviewee could demonstrate that they are an exceptional candidate for the job but if they fail to hit the required percentage of those keywords then no job.

@CritAnime

"shorties" make less money:

http://news.ufl.edu/2003/10/16/heightsalary/

http://suite101.com/article/tall-people-earn-more-a141680

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Pfft. Seems todays job market is less about getting the right person for the job and more about whos face fits best.

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Is it really a revelation that tall, slim, attractive people tend to have an easier life?

I mean, fitting in, making friends, finding a partner/sex, being confident and so on. It must be great not to have to worry about those things while growing up and it doesn`t surprise me that such people do better overall.

Given the geek stereotype I was surprised to find that the girls on my degree course were mostly hotties - and I studied physics of all things. Is this a coincidence? I doubt it...

Sucks though I know :(


edit: typo

Last edited by Frags on 03-Mar-2013 at 01:04 PM.

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