BEAUTY will always be in the eye of the beholder. But should that legitimacy extend to an employer’s assessment of your physical attributes against their fit with a customer-facing job description?

It seems like a liberty too far. Yet a new study from HR academics at the Universities of Strathclyde, partnered by colleagues at both the University of St Andrews’ The Perception Lab and the University of Toronto, confirms an under the radar trend where employers apply, above all else, an impressionistic and ultimately shallow approach to filling vacancies.

Women are most likely to come across this prejudice, the research finds. It comes with an insulting emphasis on judgment of weight. What’s more, it occurs even when body mass index (BMI) is within the healthy range.

The 120 participants in the research were asked to rate eight pictures of men and women for their suitability for jobs working in a customer-facing role, based on appearance. The roles included a waiter or sales assistant in a shop. The same pictures were rated against a non-customer facing role.

Panel members were informed that applicants were equally qualified. The photographs reflected a "normal" weight and a "heavier" face, depicting just a subtle weight increase.

Strathclyde’s research team concluded even marginal increases in weight had a negative impact on female candidates’ job prospects.

Professor Dennis Nickson, of Strathclyde’s Department of Human Resource Management, remarks: "Many organisations in the service sector, such as shops, bars and hotels, seek to employ people with the right ‘look’ which will fit with their corporate image. A key element of a person’s look is their weight."

Workplace weight discrimination of this type isn’t new, something the university team concedes. There are many people of even "normal" weight who have suspected a job, to which they are highly suited, has gone to someone with a look considered by the selectors to be more desirable.

In the past, a slew of hiring attitude surveys have highlighted how people who are obese or overweight suffer from bias in the employment market.

But the central point of the new research is that even women in what the medical profession would conclude to be a healthy BMI range still face discrimination in the service sector.

These findings have resonance in all developed employment markets; this work has been published in the American research journal PLOS ONE.

Nickson adds: "The results found that both women and men face challenges in a highly weight-conscious labour market, especially for customer-facing roles. However, women faced far more discrimination. We found that women, even within a normal BMI range, suffered greater weight-based bias compared to men who were overtly overweight."

He goes on to underline several practical implications arising from the examination, not least from an ethical stand point but also from the business perspective.

"Ethically, the results of the study are deeply unsettling from the viewpoint of gender inequality in the workplace, highlighting the unrealistic challenges women face against societal expectations of how they should look," he says.

"From a business point of view, we would argue that employers should consciously work against such prejudice and bias by providing sensitivity training for those responsible for recruitment."

Tediously outmoded stereotypes are clearly alive and well in the hiring agenda. At the same time, I doubt if many women will be completely shocked by these disclosures. It seems it remains one of several age-old workplace hurdles yet to be fully exorcised in what is supposed to be an enlightened, more respectful age.

Of course there are posts where legitimate appraisal of personal aesthetics could be critical. For those in the fashion industry or performers in the dramatic arts, the rationale might be reasonable, based on the character role. For example it will matter to casting directors when the time comes for a new Bond to be selected to take on the 007 licence.

Anti-discrimination legislation is woolly. It implies, rather than dictates, on this subjective element. Employers are officially barred from considering gender, religious faith, disability, ethnic origin and a range of other specifics when hiring. Your physique, fuller or less well filled, irrespective of gender, goes without guidance; it isn’t a disability. Common sense should prevail. The actor or fashion model example is one end of the scale of the material relevance of weight and form. I’ve heard of bus companies warning drivers of the consequences of getting too close to the steering wheel as a result of a certain avoirdupois around the middle.

The employers’ concern focuses on whether full control of the vehicle and stewardship of passenger safety can be maintained, especially in an emergency.

That’s fair enough because it draws upon understandable guidance from health and safety rules.

After all, as well as the individual there could be 50 or more innocent souls on that vehicle, both destination and destiny in that driver’s hands. Such factors of personal form may prove to be a threat to others. In more typical situations weight surely doesn’t matter. Compounding this odd prejudice issue is the fact that the service sector is a big employer and that it tends to attract a large proportion of women.

As well as unfair, it is plain unaffordable to lose efficient contributors to a dysfunction of a society that should know better.