Shave Beard, Get Job
A few weeks ago I wrote about my suspicion that age discrimination was impacting my in-person interviews. Telephone interviews with a few companies had gone great, then after meeting me face-to-face they suddenly cited vague or laughably flimsy "personality problems" as reasons not to move forward with me.
The night I wrote that blog I decided to shave my beard. It did make me look older. And it had flecks of what looked like gray hair in it (which could've actually been bits of natural blond) even when I kept it very closely cropped.
The next morning I flew out for F2F interviews with another company. Those went well. Hours later I began negotiating terms of an offer. Negotiations took a while because they fell across my off-the-grid vacation but I completed them and accepted the offer this week.
Is it merely a coincidence that I shaved to look younger and the very next company I met F2F was eager to hire me instead of making phony-sounding excuses not to? Possibly. But I'm not the only person who's experienced that coincidence.
One of my friends, J., has worn a bushy beard for most of his adult life. At least since I've known him, anyway. J. is one of those guys who started to go gray early. He had visible streaks of gray even in his 20s. Now his beard is mostly white. With a recent picture up on LinkedIn he was getting no leads. He shaved his beard, took a picture and posted it, and contacts from recruiters and hiring managers started pouring in, praising his experience and skillset. Odd how all those lines on his resume were apparently "whited out" by his hair.
The night I wrote that blog I decided to shave my beard. It did make me look older. And it had flecks of what looked like gray hair in it (which could've actually been bits of natural blond) even when I kept it very closely cropped.
The next morning I flew out for F2F interviews with another company. Those went well. Hours later I began negotiating terms of an offer. Negotiations took a while because they fell across my off-the-grid vacation but I completed them and accepted the offer this week.
Is it merely a coincidence that I shaved to look younger and the very next company I met F2F was eager to hire me instead of making phony-sounding excuses not to? Possibly. But I'm not the only person who's experienced that coincidence.
One of my friends, J., has worn a bushy beard for most of his adult life. At least since I've known him, anyway. J. is one of those guys who started to go gray early. He had visible streaks of gray even in his 20s. Now his beard is mostly white. With a recent picture up on LinkedIn he was getting no leads. He shaved his beard, took a picture and posted it, and contacts from recruiters and hiring managers started pouring in, praising his experience and skillset. Odd how all those lines on his resume were apparently "whited out" by his hair.