Fenton's Jobs & More
Welcome
Hello. My name's Fenton. This site made its debut on April 2006, and is a resource for all those wanting to manage their careers well. Please visit Fenton's other 8 websites, which are listed at the bottom of this page. Be sure to visit often. Each site is updated with new stuff once per month. And remember to log on the other pages on this site--click on any of the 4 tabs across the top of this page: "Home," "About," "Contact," "Favorite".
Also, this site, as well as all of Fenton's other sites, including their respective webhosting services, are all supported by advertising, to keep it free (the way it should be!). So, whenever you can, go ahead and click on their logos and visit their sites too.....sometimes, Fenton's homepages will be completely covered by advertisements; just refresh/reload the address on your internet browser--sometimes you may even have to do this several times--but it's worth it, to get to all that great content.
What's New February 2012
This month's featured links:
http://www.bestjobinterviewadvice.com
http://www.directoryofrecruiters.com
Freebie: free post-it sticky notes . . . http://sandypaper.com/sample.htm
Scan Fenton's Jobs and Careers website with your mobile app(s), using this QR code:
This month's featured article/essay(s):
Why being attractive can hurt your job prospects
By: Debra Black
Beautiful people are often reported to have an advantage in life, but a new study has found that sometimes being beautiful or handsome can actually be a disadvantage.
In a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology a German psychology professor, working with colleagues at the
In two studies, conducted by Maria Agthe of the
In previous literature, Agthe found that being attractive meant people generally received more positive evaluations than others who aren’t attractive and often receive many advantages in the work place. She was curious to see if there were any exceptions to this rule.
Her research revealed an interesting exception.
In the study “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” Agthe tested two sets of students in different experiments.
In the first, she asked 2,639 participants to imagine being a member of a selection committee for a scholarship and to evaluate either three male or female candidates. Pictures of the finalists were presented along with their personal information. Participants then ranked the three finalists in order of preference.
As the researchers expected, they found a pro-attractiveness bias in opposite-sex choices, but the same bias wasn’t found in same-sex selections.
“Men were unimpressed by a male applicant’s handsomeness,” writes Agthe in an email to the Star from
“Women actually discriminated against beautiful same-sex candidates. Women selected highly attractive female candidates only 11.7 per cent of the time while they largely preferred moderately attractive same-sex candidates (they were given priority 55.7 per cent of the time.)
“These results show that – even though attractiveness is often linked with positive outcomes – beauty doesn’t always translate into greater successes.”
Agthe speculates the reason for this kind of discrimination against attractive people by a same-sex peer or colleague could be related to a number of factors, including jealousy. That, she said, is especially true for females who see more attractive women as a threat because they feel men are more attracted to beautiful women.
The team also asked 622 students to take part in a second study that looked at the moderating effects of a participant’s own level of attractiveness on the beauty bias.
Participants were asked to pretend they were job recruiters and were evaluating a potential job candidate.
They were given a description of the person’s accomplishments. Information about the candidate was always constant, but they were shown either a highly or moderately attractive man or woman. Participants were then asked to categorize the candidates as either highly or moderately attractive.
The study found a pro-attractiveness bias for opposite-sex candidates, while participants discriminated against highly attractive same-sex candidates.
But in this second study, the bias held only for average-looking participants, Agthe reported. “The bias was not observed among highly attractive participants (for whom highly attractive same-sex individuals do not pose especially potent social threats, as they are attractive themselves.)”
For Agthe, who wouldn’t comment on her own attractiveness other than to provide a link to her website and a picture, the results of the study show “humans are less objective in their selections and evaluations of others than they often think they are. As a result, they might not always hire, select or recommend the best candidate.”
She did say, however, that she has “experienced that some (particularly female) persons did not seem to wish to have a highly attractive same-sex person around and that beautiful females might sometimes feel disadvantaged when being evaluated by a same-sex person.”
So how does Agthe suggest the attractiveness bias be removed?
“It might be important to make people aware of such biases. Since people generally tend to believe that their own judgments are not susceptible to prejudice, increasing their awareness of such biases could counter some of their consequences,” she said in her email.
In her report she also recommends that having same-sex as well as opposite-sex assessors on a panel might lessen the bias.
Another suggestion is to cut photographs from early selection procedures. It might not eliminate the bias from a face-to-face interview, Agthe said, but at least candidates would be given a fair chance to appear before a selection panel.
Check out Fenton's Web Ring (the other great sites):
Fenton's Inspiration, Cartoons, Greetings and Humour
Fenton's Library, News, and Educational Links
Fenton's Finance (Canadian)
Fenton's Faith (church, all religions welcome)
Fenton's Flavours; food, nutrition, recipes
Geography, a "worldly" topic.
Fenton's Home Repair and Maintenance
Fenton's Storage Depot of All Links (when any or all the other sites are down)
Also, check out Fenton's Calendar of Canadian Events, and click on the earth/clock logo on the upper right margin on this page for accurate time-keeping.
Send me any comments, questions or feedback:
