Physical appearance, a key to success : the school-to-work transition for sales management professionals ; L'apparence physique, à travailler pour travailler : l'exemple de la primo-insertion professionnelle des cadres commerciaux

Despite a French Equal Opportunity Employment law penalizing wage discrimination based on physical appearance, the results of several recent studies suggest that appearance is a selling point on the job market. Based on an empirical approach combining several different methods, the research described in this thesis analyzes the role and importance of physical appearance at three points during the first job search of sales management professionals. In order to approach their entrance into the job market with more serenity and to facilitate their actual job search, candidates for sales management positions attempt to adapt their " profiles " to their own representation of recruiter expectations. By working on their "look ", they hope to create what they feel is a " recruitable " appearance. Authors of job search manuals skirt around the issue of appearance to avoid running afoul of societal and legal restrictions, while still managing to underline the importance of physical appearance in job candidate evaluations. Above and beyond professional competence, the evaluation of which appears to be more objective, physical appearance is factored into the judgement of a candidate's quality by all the recruiters observed and interviewed for this research. This thesis sweeps aside a good number of preconceived ideas about students, appearance/body enhancement, and recruiting procedures. It demonstrates that"the task is enormous " (Amadieu, 2002) if the goal is to limit this kind of workplace discrimination. ; Malgré la loi française pour l'égalité devant l'emploi pénalisant les discriminations salariales basées sur l'apparence physique, quelques études nous invitent à penser que celle-ci peut recevoir une valeur sur le marché du travail. Reposant sur un dispositif empirique qui conjugue plusieurs méthodes, notre travail de recherche analyse comment et dans quelles mesures l'apparence physique des cadres commerciaux intervient lors de trois " haltes " ponctuant leur primo-insertion professionnelle. Pour envisager plus ...