For some time I have been pondering how much the physical size and shape of an employer influences their choice of staff and would be interested in feedback from people around this country (UK) and also in other parts of the world.

I first became aware of this in a previous employment where I used to travel to various locations and meet with the staff there. Often there was diversity in age or gender but often a high correlation between the general body shape of the person doing the employing and the people they employed.

I know this is very simplistic and there may be many many other factors involved but I can't help but notice it where I work at the moment...

There are five departments broadly where I work split thus: accounts, support, web design, marketing, sales.

* Accounts has a short round woman running it and the staff increasingly mirror that shape as the current manager replaces natural wastage and employs her own staff
* Sales are run by a slim active man with a shaved head and that describes most of the sales (even down to three of them having shaved heads)
* Web design has a marathon runner as head and are (surprise) thin and willowy
etc etc

Now the one area that is slightly more diverse is support. As it is reasonably specialist it may attract less candidates for employment and so necessity overrules the choice or it may be something else (eg one thought is that some of the staff have an uncanny resemblance shape-wise to the manager's wife). Within accounts there is probably more choice of staff so there is more chance of being able to apply the shape criterion.

Now it could be that most accounts people are a certain shape and most web designers are a different sort of shape. It could be that the activities of people outside of work affects their physical shape and somehow reflects their choice of occupation.

My sense that shape may be in many cases the overriding factor though was strengthened by a recent visit to another branch of our company where the accounts staff were a completely different shape to the ones where I work...

It's a semi-flippant topic I know, but I'd be genuinely interested to know if other people experience the same thing or are aware of it.

It raises some interesting thoughts on interview technique as well...