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Are there fewer job opportunities for attractive women?

Beauty may only be skin-deep, but could your good looks be sabotaging your employment opportunities?

According to a new study from two universities in Israel, a woman's good looks are detrimental to her finding a job.

The researchers conclude that beautiful women are discriminated against, but not because their would-be employers equate a pretty face with lower intelligence -- the "dumb-blonde hypothesis" or "the bimbo effect". It's for another reason altogether.

They suggest that beautiful women aren't getting job interviews on account of women in human resource departments feeling threatened by their looks.

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In Europe and Israel it is common to imbed a headshot to your resume. Therefore, the methodology of the study involved sending out resumes of men and women to 2656 companies, some with photos and some without. Ninety three percent of the human resource representatives who determined who got an interview were women.

From the study's abstract:

Employer callbacks to attractive men are significantly higher than to men with no picture and to plain-looking men, nearly doubling the latter group. Strikingly, attractive women do not enjoy the same beauty premium. In fact, women with no picture have a significantly higher rate of callbacks than attractive or plain-looking women.

However, the researchers conclusion doesn't take into account why plain-looking women also had a lower callback rate relative to candidates who did not include a photo. It may simply be that candidates not attaching their pictures are perceived as more professional in general.

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Despite the issue that pretty women may have hard time getting their foot in the door, studies have shown that once an attractive candidate is hired, they get paid higher salaries and even climb the corporate ladder faster than their average-looking peers.

If there is any truth to this particular study's hypothesis, beautiful Canadians on the job hunt don't need to sweat it. Unless you're an actor or entertainer, attaching headshots to job applications or CVs is not standard practice.

Having said that, if you're an attractive woman and land an interview for the job of your dreams, it probably wouldn't hurt you to sport a pair of specs.