Unemployment Is Ugly: Good Looking People Are Having No Problem Finding Jobs

Wondering why you're not getting called back after a job interview? It could be because you're ugly. According to a new study by Italian researchers at the University of Messina, physical appearance plays a significant role during the first stage of the hiring process.

Researchers delivered more than 11,000 resumes for 1,542 positions across Italy. For each job opportunity, the experimenters submitted eight different resumes: four with headshots of an attractive or unattractive male or female, and four without photos.

Although the average callback rate was 30 percent, the researchers found pretty women and men to be more successful. Good-looking ladies had a return rate of 54 percent, and beautiful men had a rate of 47 percent.

The unattractive applicants were not as triumphant, especially the ladies. The callback rate for the less attractive applicants was 26 percent for men and 7 percent for women. Great, another gender disparity for us to cry about.

The Italian researchers did not divulge exactly why unattractive women fared more poorly than the unattractive men, but they did leave us with this lovely suggestion...

"Searching for a job seems to be just like a beauty contest: it is better for unattractive women to invest [in] aesthetic surgery than in education."

Wow, so scientists are now perpetuating the notion of "beauty over brains"? How ironic.

Via NY Daily News, Photo courtesy HBO