Does Hair Loss Affect Career Prospects?

How did you look at your last job interview?

Most likely, you made an effort to wear appropriate attire and took care to ensure you looked clean and tidy. That’s normal; everyone wants to make a good impression and stand out from the crowd when meeting a potential employer. But can such things as clothes and hairstyles affect your ability to move up the career ladder once you've got the job?

A 2009 article in Management Today suggests that they might and looks at a range of factors that workers seeking promotion should pay attention to.

First impressions

While dress sense may seem an obvious factor, would you consider height, weight and hair to make a difference to your career prospects? Apparently they do; tall people earn more than shorter people while thinner employees earn more than their obese counterparts. When it comes to hair, Corrinne Mills, MD of Personal Career Management, pointed out that men and women should keep their hair tidy and in a current style. But what about hair loss?

While some experts say that bald men are at a disadvantage in the job stakes, others say that hair loss is not a barrier to promotion. No doubt, it varies between companies, and when thinning hair is not a problem, this can be due to the fact that Male Pattern Baldness affects over two-thirds of men that are of working age, so balding men may have dominated senior jobs for many years.

So does female hair loss affect a woman’s promotion prospects? Female Pattern Hair Loss affects approximately 40-50% of women and leads to an all-over thinning around the top of the scalp and hairline. The hair thinning often becomes more severe during the menopause and can easily affect a woman’s confidence; for some it may be so distressing that it becomes difficult to exceed expectations and push for a promotion. This is largely to do with the fact that a woman’s appearance and self-image can be so closely tied to her hair.

'Good looking people earn more'

The article in Management Today made reference to some research undertaken by the University of Florida that showed that ‘good-looking’ people earn more and go further in their professional lives.

The author of the research, Timothy Judge told the publication, “Little is known about why there are income disparities between the good-looking and the not-so-good-looking. Even accounting for intelligence, a person's feeling of self-worth is enhanced by how attractive they are and this, in turn, results in higher pay.”

Judge does not say how he determined what qualifies a person to be ‘good-looking’ or ‘not-so-good-looking’. However, it is easy to see how thinning hair can make some women - and men - feel unattractive, as well as how this in turn, can lower their self-confidence and chances for promotion.

There are bald women out there, such as TV presenter and Alopecia Areata sufferer Gail Porter, who show how beautiful women can be without hair, but the fact remains that many men and women prefer the way they look with their locks.

For those, investigating appropriate hair loss treatment options can be helpful; many people are unaware that there are clinically-proven options, MHRA-licensed and FDA-approved for the treatment of pattern hair loss, and a specialist can help to find those best-suited to each individual's specific situation.