SAN JOSE, Calif. - In a job market so tight that every edge counts, some laid-off workers are hoping that a face lift will give them a foot in the door.
At the residents' cosmetic clinic in the Stanford Medical Center, about half the patients in the past couple of years have been tech industry workers looking for a boost in their job searches, said supervisor Dr. David Apfelberg. The clinic offers cosmetic surgery by residents in their final year at reduced rates, and operates on 75 to 100 patients a year.
"These people now have no salary," said Apfelberg, a plastic surgeon. "They're going back in the job market, competing with younger people."
The total cost for patients getting their face and eyes done at the clinic ranges from $6,000 to $10,000, compared with the market rate of $8,000 to $15,000, he said.
Other local cosmetic surgery clinics also report that some patients hope a new look will help them find a new job - and that the time between jobs is ideal for recovering from cosmetic surgery safely hidden from view. But other patients balk at the cost of the surgery when they don't have any income.
Maria, a 39-year-old Silicon Valley sales professional, said she thinks the expense will be worth it. She knows that in the next few months her company will probably go out of business. So she has scheduled cosmetic surgery on her eyes.
"I know if I go apply for a job anywhere and I look the way I look with my swollen eyes, no one's going to hire me," said Maria, who asked that her last name not be used. "I don't look fresh, I look wiped out. ... You're not supposed to judge people by their looks, but people do."
It's unclear how important youthful looks really are in a job search. When older workers have trouble finding jobs, it's difficult to tell whether the problem is their appearance, the perception that they're overqualified or simply a lack of jobs.
Sometimes it's not the face lift that helps job fortunes, but the lift in spirits and confidence that can come with it.
"I think it's attitude," said Marianne Adoradio, a career counselor in San Jose.
Cosmetic surgery is probably too extreme for many job hunters. But after all, trying to look young in the workplace is nothing new, said Susan Magrino, chief executive of WorkForce OS, a Burlingame, Calif., software company that runs a Web site for people changing fields in mid-career.
As she said, "Women have dyed their hair for years so that they could compete."