Do Recruiter's have a built in dislike of beards?

I got a few comments asking if I was suffering from seasonal stress after my "rant" about LinkedIn requests so I thought I'd post something a little more light-hearted today (btw, the ranting is very normal for me - I just tend to tone it down for the blog!).

I notice that Joe McTiernan has blogged about beards; asking the question "Are people with beards untrustworthy?".  That's an old recruitment favourite in my book. You get a CV in from a candidate who looks great on paper, you invite them in for interview, afterwards (no matter how great they are) all you can say to your colleagues is "you should have seen his beard".

Evidence of this can be found back in 1998 in an article from The Independent.  A recruiter, asked to fill a MD role was "instructed to exclude bearded men from his shortlist." The recruiter is quoted as saying "I agree with my clients that it's hard to strike up the same rapport with a bearded man as you can get with a clean shaven one - in a job where interpersonal skills are demanded, beards don't help."

However, with the help of Joe's post and his contributors you may be able to overcome your prejudice.  I quite liked the comments that Liam made:

"if you're Father Christmas then a beard is a must. FC's beard provides him that friendly warm look that kids like so much. Wizards! Wizards are possibly the hardest geezers on Earth and would be nothing without their beards."

I did rather like Dumbledore's beard - perhaps I'm warming after all!

Comments

[Idealpeople]

We once had a candidate fired from his new job for refusing to shave his beard. Seriously...