In my 30years of experience, I have seen several economic situations, each one uniquely different but all the same. No matter the differences, one issue remained the same. If you wanted to endure, you needed to possess every attribute desired by your employer and prospective employer.
One constant is, how you look is as important as what you know. It’s as important to look youthful as it is to look experienced. Unfortunately looking older does not pay off, most of the time you are not perceived as experienced it’s simply perceived as old.
We have all witnessed the discrimination towards individuals that do not fit in, we seen the between the man with the full head of hair and the “bald guy”, the women with a thick head of hair and the women that “I wonder what might be wrong with her”. I’ve listened to people tell me about the other person being promoted and showcased while they were left behind just because they looked the part.
In every one of these economic downturns, I have seen the men and women that have addressed their hair loss morph into much more confident and assertive individuals. Let me relate to you a story about one of my clients, during the last recession this guy found himself looking for work after losing the job he held for over seven years. Well, one day he came in to see me, he told me he had been to one interview after another with no interest in him from anyone he had interviewed with. He confided in me that he felt it was because he was balding. Once he addressed his hair loss, armed with a renewed confidence and a full head of hair he told me now the only thing he could be judged by was his qualifications.
Well, I’m not going to tell you everything changed overnight but he did start to get call backs from initial interviews and within several weeks did land a new job, and to this day if you ask him he will tell you “it was the hair”.
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