Weighing down your career

Posted by Ricki Sharpe on June 2, 2008  
Filed Under Careers, Interviewing, Selection

Being overweight or obese is not only bad for your health but can also be bad for your career, according to a US study. Cort Rudolph, a researcher at Wayne State University looked at over 25 years of research on weight-based bias in the workplace to see whether being overweight hindered the chance of getting a job or moving up the work ladder.

“The bias appears to be most prominent during the hiring process, when an employer knows a potential employee the least and therefore is most likely to be influenced by stereotypes (such as fat people are lazy),” said Rudolph who presented his meta-analysis on the topic at a conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in April.

Rudolph concluded that obesity does have a denigrating effect in the workplace, with the weight-based bias stronger for sales positions than for managerial positions.

“There are a whole set of stereotypes that go along with being overweight and a lot of them transfer into the workplace in terms of people’s judgement about others’ abilities and appearance in relation to job performance,” said Rudolph.

“Some of the basic stereotypes associated with being overweight include laziness, sloppiness, untidiness and lack of self-discipline and control,” he said

While the bias was felt most when overweight people applied for a job and went through the initial selection process, there was some good news. The bias effect was found to be less of a factor at the performance evaluation stage and with stereotypes having a minimum influence when it comes to promotions.

“Generally, the bias effect tends to decrease as people’s tenure with an organisation increases,” Rudolph said.


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