I think everyone has noticed: drug company sales representatives are invariably good-looking. This NYT article says many of them are drawn from college cheerleading squads.
Of course, this is America, so if someone is hired based on a natural and superior trait, we don't like it. The alarm bells about attractive drug reps are beginning to go off, and equality-obsessed critics are looking for reasons--besides rank envy--to shut down the hiring practice.
Federal law bans employment discrimination based on factors like race and gender, but it omits appearance from the list.
"Generally, discriminating in favor of attractive people is not against the law in the United States," said James J. McDonald Jr., a lawyer with Fisher & Phillips. But that might be changing, he said, citing a recent ruling by the California Supreme Court, which agreed to hear an employment lawsuit brought by a former L'Oreal manager who ignored a supervisor's order to fire a cosmetics saleswoman and hire someone more attractive.
But pharmaceutical companies deny that sex appeal has any bearing on hiring. "Obviously, people hired for the work have to be extroverts, a good conversationalist, a pleasant person to talk to; but that has nothing to do with looks, it's the personality," said Lamberto Andreotti, the president of worldwide pharmaceuticals for Bristol-Myers Squibb.
But Dr. Carli, at the University of Michigan, said that seduction appeared to be a deliberate industry strategy. And with research showing that pharmaceutical sales representatives influence prescribing habits, the industry sales methods are drawing criticism.
Dr. Dan Foster, a West Virginia surgeon and lawmaker who said he was reacting to the attractive but sometimes ill-informed drug representatives who came to his office, introduced a bill to require them to have science degrees. Dr. Foster's legislation was not adopted, but it helped inspire a new state regulation to require disclosure of minimum hiring requirements.
