Nah, gobs of people will insist to your face, despite direct evidence, that "I can look past it" when interviewing, or "I don't see color"

The world is made of HR departments and executive suites chock full of people who insist they are somehow special and immune to all the things we know about how fallible humans are at making decisions.

It's like how nearly everyone believes themselves to be an "Above average" driver, including the morons who get into an accident every single year because they text and drive constantly.

Hamm is a great example. He hazed multiple people in college, like burned a dudes dick, never apologized, and settled out of court. When asked about it he often used his mom's death to avoid the topic. Dude has never owned up to it.

But cuz he's a funny attractive white dude nobody cares.

The problem with pretty privilege is it's quite female centric. (It's not that normative to call a man pretty and intend it as a compliment) It ignores that it also applies to men who are attractive, tall, have strong (as in pronounced) masculine physical features

This sounds like a great idea. Can you share more details about the story? Did she finally get a job?

Same reason you shouldn't try to build skills or acquire unique relevant experience as part of your job search: if everybody does it, the net effect will be zero.

>If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero.

I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a baseline issue here. Regardless, even if it netted out to zero, you'd end up with a different order of who gets hired when, so for any individual it'd still make sense to try to improve your looks.

Companies, certainly large ones, prefer people who can communicate and behave professionally, so that would favor well-dressed applicants. If we're thinking nerdy stereotypes: most programmers (by far) don't have to (and can't) solve tricky graph-theoretical algorithms or optimize intricate low-level stuff.

I get a haircut and wear a suit when I interview but am wearing an oversized Star Wars t-shirt while working right now. It’s just putting in the right level of effort at the right time?

There might be a set of people for whom that might be true. There are a lot of people for whom that is not true and, fair or not, they will have an easier time to make things happen in the world

In my experience the worst dressed definitely have more self confidence about their ability, rightly or wrongly

honest question - did that cliche ever apply to women? or non-white people?

i'm well aware of the stereotype but 100% of the time, seen it as a scrubby white guy in a hoodie.

Halo effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect