You Have to Be This Beautiful To Get This Job

When I was unemployed and searching for a job, I always felt like there wasn’t a job site that met my specific talents. Luckily, in spite of this, I was able to find a job, but should anything ever happen and I am out looking again, I was just made aware of a site that seems almost created exclusively for me. On April 29, 2010, http://beautifuljobseekers.com was launched to help those men and women who have been hampered by their good looks and want to find a job where the competition is a little less fierce.

All sarcasm aside, this site truly did launch and the press release that was sent out to announce this new job search resource makes some sense, as disgusting as that may sound. As the press release notes, if you walk into any successful night club, you’ll notice that the bartenders are hot. At any restaurant, the waitresses can get you to order extra food just by batting their eyelashes. And a good salesperson knows that their ability to sell can be augmented by a beautiful face, a winning smile and maybe a specific way they dress. And look at your news anchors. Beautiful people are a hot commodity, so it would make sense that a website would be devoted to this sect of the population that is out of work and “too beautiful” to be unemployed.

When I worked at a newspaper, our salesperson was very attractive and led us to record sales. Our receptionist was beautiful and she was there to greet people – the first face they would see when they came to our office. And one of our reporters was a knockout and she was strategically used on the police beat – why, because if police didn’t respond to the guy talk that sometimes wins them over with male reporters, they love flirting with a beautiful woman.

According to the press release, BeautifulJobSeekers.com is an employment website which helps beautiful, skilled and talented job seekers to stand out from the competition in the job market. At the same time it helps employers seeking beautiful, skilled and talented people, to speed up their recruitment process. Here is what Ralph van Troost, founder of BeautifulJobSeekers.com, said about the site: "I figured if no-one else is going to close this ugly gap between beautiful job seekers and employers looking to hire them, I'm going to do it myself."

But here is the problem with the site. After working hard on a resume, preparing for the job interview and struggling with rejection from one company after another, there really is no need for a site to deflate the ego of the unemployed job seeker any further. In order to get full access to the site, you need to be considered a beautiful person. How does this happen? You upload your picture and get ranked, sort of like Hot or Not Hot or Face the Jury. If you don’t rank, you don’t get the access you might need for the job you want. Now, not only are you not getting the job, you are also being told by total strangers that you might be ugly or at least not pretty enough to work where you want to work. Imagine how detrimental this could be at a time when morale is already low.But here is the other problem. We do take notice of beautiful people – it’s a tragic fault of the society we live in, but if you pay close attention, there are those that aren’t considered beautiful who are the patron’s favorite bartender or waitress, because they win them over with conversation. There are sales people who sign the clients on their charm. There are reporters who use talent to get the story. There are other kinds of beautiful out there, which can’t be measured by a photograph and superficial minds.

If anything, BeautifulJobSeekers.com is for those who already have jobs and are casually looking for new ones, but for those hardworking unemployed individuals who need a job yesterday, BeautifulJobSeekers.com is not only an ugly site, it’s a waste of time…and no matter what economy we are in, time is money.

--Posted by Jon Minners, Vault.com