Type the phrase ‘good looking weather girls’ into Google and you’ll get 153,000,000 results.

What?

153m. How come? Is it a coincidence that the top meteorologists all happen to be remarkably attractive women? Or are stunning good looks and perfect teeth an essential part of telling us to wrap up warm and remember a brolly?

More often than not the weather forecast makes me ask a simple question: do good looking people get better jobs? All things being equal, is the job offered to the better looking candidate? Is it not so much a ‘good big ’un will always beat a good little ’un’ as the old saying goes, but a pretty ’un beating a… well, less aesthetically pleasing ’un.

All logic suggests that the answer should be ‘no.’ But the evidence points in the opposite direction: that beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder, it’s also in the eye of the employer.

In 2013 the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex released the findings of a study of 8,000 men and women who’d left school in Wisconsin in 1957. School photos were used to rate their looks and all the other factors – educational success, parents social class and so on – were taken into account. The study found that at every stage of their career the better looking candidates had better jobs and higher earnings – on average around 4% more per annum. The ‘beauty premium’ even counted as the Class of ’57 approached retirement – presumably as looks were starting to fade.

These findings almost exactly mirrored the conclusions of Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People are More Successful, by Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at the University of Texas. Despite being – according to one reviewer – ‘a boring book on a great subject,’ Hamermesh also put the ‘beauty premium’ at around 3-4% a year: a considerable amount over a working lifetime.

So clearly education is a waste of time. Qualifications are out and fixing your teeth, losing weight and getting a tan are what really count. That’s what will give you confidence, and confidence is what will bring the best jobs.

So much for the conventional wisdom. As you might expect, I have some views of my own…

I have seen remarkably talented, well-qualified – and good-looking – women passed over for jobs several times. Why? Because ‘she’s too pretty: she won’t be taken seriously.’ Not so much a ‘beauty premium’ as a ‘beauty penalty.’

What’s an employer to do? Clearly you can’t discriminate when you’re hiring someone: not on grounds of age, race, sexual preference or gender. And neither do I recommend discriminating on the grounds of looks – either positively or negatively.

We live in an increasingly litigious world. While the election victory for the Conservatives will cut down on red tape for employers and ease some of the burdens Ed Miliband would have brought, I’d still be very careful about giving anyone any potential grounds for saying – and subsequently claiming – that they’ve been unfairly treated.

Make sure you document your reasons for hiring – or rejecting – a candidate thoroughly. Don’t give someone chance to come back and complain their ‘face didn’t fit’ – whether it was beauty or the beast.

But maybe there’s light at the end of the tunnel. More and more business is being done online. Face to face meetings occupy a fraction of the time they did ten or twenty years ago. Perhaps the time is fast approaching when the biggest advantage in business will be your golden voice, not your looks.

But I won’t hold my breath when the weather forecast comes on…