Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Don't let nose ringfool you

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Sunday, December 12, 1999

Don't let nose ringfool you
Employers should look beneath the surface

Corpus Christi Online

The other day, local restaurateur Brad Lomax made this interesting observation about Austin, where he owns one restaurant:
   "There are all these 26-year-old guys with nose rings who just took their company public and have $30 million."
   Then, like, the next day, Fortune Small Business magazine comes in the mail and on the cover is this scruffy looking young guy with bleached hair, a George Michael 5 o'clock shadow and earrings in both ears. The cover's headline is ".com or bust!" and warns: "If your company is going to survive, you'll have to act like Leri Greer - or compete with him."
   And, of course, there are those Ameritrade commercials, with the fast-talking, smart-alecky red-headed kid who shows off his savvy for self-directed, discount trading. I forget how many piercings he has. Ameritrade didn't get back to me.
   But it's clear that we have a strong stereotype here - young folks who don't conform, who find their own way, who succeed financially in their 20s beyond the wildest dreams of financially successful traditional business people in their 40s, 50s and 60s. The vehicle of youthful success usually involves the Internet and the most identifiable symbol of maverick-ness seems to be the nose ring.
   Dress for success?
   Hank Gilman, managing editor of Fortune Small Business, readily admits that his publication was shooting for the stereotype on its cover.
   "It's not very complicated. He just sort of exudes dot-com. It's sort of that free agent image - a little scruffy, a little rock and roll.
   "It's sort of a cliche that every dot-com operator looks like that, which they don't."
   Would you hire someone who looks like that? Not if you don't have to, says Moustafa Abdelsamad, dean of the business school at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
   "If I am a creative person and I am a genius - Gates-quality or something like that - I can dress any way I want to. You need me. I don't need you.
   "If I need you desperately, I'm going to overlook a lot of things. For example, our computer people, they are needed desperately so they can dress psychedelically. They can do whatever they want to do and the companies are going to go out of their way to accommodate them."
   Eye of the customer
   But if there are two applicants with comparable skills and one has a nose ring and the other looks like a bank executive, Abdelsamad would hire the clean-cut banker-looking applicant.
   "What you should be looking for is their skill, not how they're dressed. Any time you can get both, I'll opt for the one who's not weird. Perception is very important. Unfortunately, we are human beings and part of the hiring process is impression."
   Speaking of bankers - and stereotypes - you'd think a bank would be the last place that would hire a nose-pierced applicant. Not necessarily so.
   John Trice runs the Frost Bank on Padre Island, where things admittedly are more laid-back. He says he wouldn't overlook a potential hire because of a nose ring. But that's partly a function of his market.
   "We hire people who fit the marketplace and our marketplace is very laid-back. We have a professionalism that we have to maintain but it is not so much what you look like as how the customer sees you. In my market, if the customer sees me in a suit, they think something's wrong."
   Appearance sake
   The issues of appearance and stereotype go beyond hiring, he says. One big mistake he doesn't want to make is overlooking a customer because of appearance. He has wealthy customers who could be mistaken for beach bums.
   Likewise, he can see the challenge that Austin bankers must face, when scruffy, body-pierced prospective customers come looking to finance their dreams.
   "There's a whole kind of independence move out there," Trice says. "But it makes our job challenging because I'm in a pretty traditional industry."
   Best skills
   Steve Seidel, a social psychologist at A&M-Corpus Christi, sees pluses and minuses to the apparent growing willingness to embrace people who have marketable skills but don't fit the corporate image.
   "It is good in that stereotypes are broken down and there is a message of increased tolerance for diversity," he says. "It is bad in the sense that the message of 'anything goes' might be seen as applying to all areas of the business sector. There is no evidence that it does.
   "When competition decreases - if it ever does - then companies may go back to past norms of less tolerance. Time will tell. But for now, it's hire the best, not necessarily the best-looking, because if you look past one's abilities in making employee decisions, you most likely will not be able to compete. The opposition is ferocious."



Tom Whitehurst

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