Makeup companies are shifting to a more gender neutral appeal, a move that’s getting a lot of attention in mainstream media. In January, Maybelline Cosmetics (owned by L’Oreal), made waves by hiring a male beauty vlogger for an upcoming mascara ad campaign. This announcement came on the heels of CoverGirl (owned by COTY) naming their first ever “cover boy” last fall. These steps by Maybelline and CoverGirl are part of a growing trend of beauty brands becoming more gender neutral.
I wanted to see if this gender-neutral shift is also playing out in cosmetics companies’ hiring practices. As we have seen at Textio, the gender tone of a job post predicts who applies and who a company will hire.
The technology industry is fighting a largely publicized battle to eliminate their masculine bias. Given that the beauty industry has been so heavily geared towards women since its inception, I guessed that beauty brands may be biased towards women.
Looking at the gender tone for their publicly available job listings, Textio found that four out of five cosmetic companies have gender neutral job posts. The one exception is COTY (which owns CoverGirl, Sally Hansen, OPI and others), which surprisingly has a slightly masculine gender tone.
I then looked at how these companies compare on the hiring front by looking at their Textio Index rankings.
Most beauty companies may be ahead of the curve when it comes to gender neutral job posts, but they could all add some “oomf” to their overall job descriptions if they want to hire better and more fairly. None of the cosmetics brands I looked at currently have a Textio Score above 50, which is the overall average for the 50,000+ companies listed in the Textio Index. Benefit hires the best with a Textio Scorfeof 33; the next closest is L’Oréal with 32. Estée Lauder comes in as the lowest of the five with a score of just 24.
Regardless of your gender, it’s invaluable to know that a company cares about good and fair hiring practices before you even apply. Because you’re worth it!