There’s a meme concerning various human resources departments, and it has to do with the idea that attractive people earn more money than their less attractive counterparts. Is this a sign of discrimination on the part of HRs who give the meme life or just natural selection in action?
In one of her latest blog posts, HR guru Laurie Ruettimann addresses what she sees as direct discrimination, and suggests an idea that would do away with such potential pratfalls, all based on the way a person appears instead of their ability to fill the open position in question. Before that, however, the idea that attractive people make more money is perpetuated by Daniel S. Hamermesh, who, in an interview with Time Magazine, indicated the difference between the earnings of attractive people and their apparent unattractive counterparts is almost a quarter of a million dollars.
That’s quite an amount, especially if the only difference between potential hires is their ability, practiced or natural, to appear more attractive than those who didn’t get the job. In fact, based on that, it’s easy to see why the discrimination angle was brought into the discussion. As indicated, Ruettimann tackles the situation head-on, and offers a simple, yet effective alternative instead of letting an HR rely on a gut feeling:
Even if the human resources process never gets automated, Ruettimann offers a common sense approach that would address such potential discriminatory hires:
Prem Paritosh
PGDM- 3rd
In one of her latest blog posts, HR guru Laurie Ruettimann addresses what she sees as direct discrimination, and suggests an idea that would do away with such potential pratfalls, all based on the way a person appears instead of their ability to fill the open position in question. Before that, however, the idea that attractive people make more money is perpetuated by Daniel S. Hamermesh, who, in an interview with Time Magazine, indicated the difference between the earnings of attractive people and their apparent unattractive counterparts is almost a quarter of a million dollars.
That’s quite an amount, especially if the only difference between potential hires is their ability, practiced or natural, to appear more attractive than those who didn’t get the job. In fact, based on that, it’s easy to see why the discrimination angle was brought into the discussion. As indicated, Ruettimann tackles the situation head-on, and offers a simple, yet effective alternative instead of letting an HR rely on a gut feeling:
Ugly people are screwed.Would automating the hiring process get rid of these kinds of issues? Would people be hired based on their ability and not on the way they look, especially if the HR process was automated? It’s almost a certainty, although, it’s not hard to envision a creative programmer developing an algorithm that compares images of the applicants, one that focuses on facial structure and other related appearance attributes.
Except HR professionals know that we could absolutely automate our hiring process, kill behavior-based interviewing, and hire for competency. Then we could do the hard work of defining and measuring performance via algorithms and automate the annual increase/bonus process.
Even if the human resources process never gets automated, Ruettimann offers a common sense approach that would address such potential discriminatory hires:
But if HR oversees a system that adversely impacts ugly people, we can fix this. Affirmative action for the butterfaces?Of course, if a company wants to avoid hiring the IT genius who happens to look like Carrot-Top because they prefer the cute blond who doesn’t know anything about the computers they being asked to support, then that company deserves whatever fate it receives.
Prem Paritosh
PGDM- 3rd
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