Batten down your armpits, stop picking your nose and reach for the extra-strong mints, because personal hygiene – or to be more accurate, a complete lack of it – is the one trait that makes a person less employable above all others in the eyes of Britain's bosses.
According to a survey by HR consultancy Reabur, 68% of business owners agreed that putting aside experience and qualifications, poor personal hygiene would be the main factor in deciding whether to employ someone or not. Negative body language (64%) was ranked a close second, followed by poor speech and grammar (59%).
Of the business owners stating they would be less likely to hire an individual with poor personal hygiene, 29% agreed that bad body odour would be the strongest reason for this, while 21% cited bad breath.
While I'm in no way endorsing poor standards of personal hygiene – I still have nightmares about a former co-worker who left her toenail clippings in neat piles beside her keyboard – it does sometimes feel that when it comes to pleasing the boss, we hapless office drones are damned if we do and damned if we don't.
Take the municipal employees of Detroit, for example, who have been banned from wearing scented deodorants, perfumes and toiletries around the office after a worker successfully sued the city, claiming a colleague's perfume was preventing her from breathing properly. Does that mean in Motor City having the body odour of a horse is actually a positive step to landing a job?
Other personal traits employers found unappealing included bad dress sense (56%), inappropriate sense of humour (47%), or workers who were simply considered to be unattractive (41%). And if you think you're cleaner than clean when it comes to all this, remember that our post-recession bosses are a ruthless bunch: almost one in 10 respondents agreed that a "poor handshake" would make them less likely to employ someone.
What sort of unappealing odours and habits do you have to put up with from your colleagues? And perhaps more to the point, does your boss rank any better?
