Do implausible anti-aging treatments damage your chances in the working world?

By: Becky Foster
Created on 11th May 2011

In a working world where it may seem that all the great jobs are going to a young and ambitious generation fighting back against the recession, where does it leave those people in the working force with valuable years of experience to offer to the workplace? Does looking older actually affect your ability to get or keep a job?

Statistics released by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons report that 13.1 million plastic surgery procedures such as facelifts, breast augmentations and Botox (all techniques used to battle against the visible effects of aging) were done in 2010, a 5% increase on procedures done in 2009. Such data consequently suggests that for many older job seekers in the market, the worry of looking too old to be hired has led them down the route of cosmetic surgery.

But there is a danger of going too far, and looking more like you have stepped in from London's fashion week (or worse), as opposed to projecting the image of a professional business man or woman that has come for an interview. Is it dangerous merely to attempt to copy the display of youth and beauty seen on the fashion runway and in magazines, and try to forge this into an image that can be taken to the office? Such attempts may be seen as incongruous with the professional persona, and to be put rather more bluntly, desperate.

In this vein, many older workers or interviewees rather than going for the drastic decision to get plastic surgery, opt for rather more subtle procedures, such as hair dyes (to get rid of those greys!) or fake tans, to achieve a more natural looking glow. Even these simple measures can still have a negative effect on your interview, should your hair dye go wrong, or you end up looking more orange skinned than olive skinned, for example.

Indeed, research shows that when meeting a stranger, our brains create an impression of that person's facial appearance within about one tenth of a second of meeting them, and our subsequent treatment of that person is based on that impression. Surely this is research that we can also apply to job interviews, which suggests it does not bode well for anyone to show up to an interview sporting the luscious dark locks of a twenty year old accessorised with grey eyebrows...

Therefore, it stands to reason that any attempts to rejuvenate one's appearance before an interview must be carefully considered so as not to distract the interviewer or your boss from the intelligent and business like contributions you are making with a bad fake tan. To make a good impression, whatever your age, it seems more important to project a professional image of yourself (whilst maintaining a neat and tidy personal exterior) in the workplace, without going to too many extremes to fight the inevitable signs of the aging process.