[Veen]

Sadly this is true. I've had conversations with very smart people who can't find a job. They often attribute it to some hiring shortcoming or bias, and sometimes that's the case. But for a couple of these people the reason was obvious: they were not "presentable" and didn't have a personality that would enable them to function well in a team, i.e. they didn't dress properly, didn't look after their personal hygiene, and were quite unpleasant to talk to.

[kcplate]

>i.e. they didn't dress properly, didn't look after their personal hygiene, and were quite unpleasant to talk to.

While I have not (thankfully) been in a hiring role for some time now, I can confirm that these three factors dq’d a ton of candidates when I was. Here is the reality…there are not a lot of roles in medium-corporate companies where a single interview with a single person gets you hired. So if you don’t tick that presentable box, even if you are technically skilled, I have to have a conversation with the next interviewer that goes like this: “I know this candidate comes off as a pompous ass with rumpled cloths and smells like feet, but…”

You better be beyond brilliant for me to sell you despite shortcomings that I have to caveat to the next interviewer.

[anticristi]

Reminds me of my wife. :)

After her PhD, she was writing cover letters that were screaming "I hate the recruitment process".

One day, something clicked. Her next cover letter read like the first chapter in her bibliography. And one month later, she had too much work. :)

[WhisperingShiba]

I for one, will never kiss the corporate ring

[kcplate]

A nobel attitude but generally not one that persists past 30 or much after the first kid is born.

[anticristi]

Or when the housing market hits you with the hammer of reality and reduces your whole "personality" to a number. :(