One of my best friends is an executive at a health magazine. The mag is currently conducting a survey of beauty products and as the only 50-something in a group of 20 and 30-somethings, my friend was appointed to test all the anti-aging products. She enlisted my help, handed me two bags full of night creams and serums and told me I had three weeks to give my user opinions.

I’m well into week two and as I was lining up my product picks for next week I had an Aha! moment. This reminds me of interviewing candidates!

It starts with the product pool.  All products are designed to deliver similar results even though they say it in a variety of ways on the box or any enclosed literature—smoother skin, better skin tone, fewer wrinkles, etc. (A lot like the jargon filling resumes.) Next qualifier to be in the pool is natural ingredients. I’ve read the boxes, trust me not all the ingredients are natural. Some have more and some have almost none.

When I started my journey as a product tester the first thing I did was to take all the products out of the bag and sort through them. Here’s what I found out. I’m a sucker for a pretty box or a nice looking container. Over engineered containers remind me of someone that’s wears too much jewelry (or too much for my taste anyway.) Then there is a category called oils. A lot of them come in an eyedropper type bottle. That doesn’t seem very creative. Product packages with too many graphic elements feel like shouting.

Next I looked for brand names. These are natural products mostly from companies I’ve never heard of, much less seen at my favorite drug or department store counter (sorry to say I don’t shop Sephora). But I did recognize a few well known spas, something from a free standing store I’ve passed in Soho and a famous dermatologist or two. Brand names make an impression, at least on me. It’s sort of like Hulu by NBC Universal versus obscure.com.—unless obscure.com is backed by Allen and Co. and says so up front.

Preliminaries are finished and sampling begins. Since all of the products have been pre-qualified none can be eliminated without trying them first. With two bags and three weeks to make my assessments, nothing has much time to make an impression. If  I don’t like the fragrance-out; too oily-out; too much alcohol-out, difficult to use or apply-out and of course didn’t really do much for my skin-out.

So do the fancy boxes and brand names win out? On balance yes, but there have been some really nice surprises in the group. My lesson, which I’ve already learned from watching the Susan Boyle video, is not to prejudge based on superficial factors. The lessons for candidates: you’ll get a lot further a lot faster if you look your best, know how to market your assets, overcome objections on the spot, and finally be able to prove you can deliver the goods.

Illustration: Andy Warhol via harpersbazaar.com