Highly dependent on the profession. In programming, I agree with you. In my experience, there's a nearly perfect inverse correlation between how much they care about their looks and how talented they seem. But not in other fields, seemingly. I basically stopped hiring slovenly people in many things because of terrible experiences (real estate agents, plumber, house inspector). I guess the difference are things that can be done solely with the brain vs things that require some amount of physical activity. We programmers have it easy in that respect.