Good-looking women discriminated against by female recruiters

Researchers found that job applications containing an attractive picture received roughly a quarter of the responses of one with a plain picture or no picture at all, if the recruiter was a woman.

The researchers believe that the reason is that many human resources women are young and in their 20s and subconsciously they do not like extra competition.

The research by Israeli economists Bradley Ruffle and Ze’ev Shtudiner to be presented at the Royal Economic Society’s 2011 annual conference, sent more than 5,000 job resumes to over 2,500 advertised job openings.

In each pair, one CV was without a picture while the other almost identical CV contained a picture of either an attractive- looking man or woman or a plain-looking man or woman.

They found that attractive women were called for interview for a position less often than plain-looking women or women who had no picture on their resume.

Women who put no picture on their CV were 22 per cent more likely to receive a response than women with a plain picture and 30 per cent more likely than women with an attractive picture.

They also that 96 per cent of the company recruiters turned out to be women, typically in their 20s and single.

These qualities, the authors argue, are more likely to make them jealous when confronted with an attractive woman in the workplace but not an attractive man – and help to explain the double standard.

An attractive men received a response to 20 per cent of their applications compared with 14 per cent for men who put no picture and nine per cent for men with plain looks.

Salúm Camila

Recursos Humanos 2 año

Miguel Luis Marino