Are Good-Looking People More Employable?

Abstract

We investigate the role of physical attractiveness in the hiring process. We sent 5312 CVs in pairs to 2656 advertised job openings. In each pair, one CV was without a picture while the second, otherwise almost identical CV contained a picture of either an attractive male/female or a plain-looking male/female. Employer callbacks to attractive men are significantly higher than to men with no picture and to plain-looking men, nearly doubling the latter group. Strikingly, attractive women do not enjoy the same beauty premium. In fact, women with no picture have a significantly higher rate of callbacks than attractive or plain-looking women. We explore a number of explanations and provide evidence that female jealousy of attractive women in the workplace and the negative perception of women (but not men) who include pictures of themselves on their CVs are the primary reasons for the punishment of attractive women.

Labor Market Discrimination in Lima, Peru: Evidence from a Field Experiment

“…Bravo et al (2009) for Chile;and Bradley and Shtudiner (2010) for Israel conduct resume audit studies. Bravo et al (2009) examine the existence of discrimination in three dimensions: gender, social class (that is captured by the place of residence in Santiago, the capital of Chile), and (indigenous) origin of the surnames.…”

“…While the law in Peru prohibits asking CVs with photos, some employers still continue to request them. In addition to providing novel evidence about the existence and extent of labor discrimination in Lima, to the best of our knowledge, the only other resume audit study that includes photos in the CVs is Ruffle and Shtudiner (2010).…”

Searching for a Job is a Beauty Contest

“…Actually, following the same procedure adopted by Ruffle and Shtudiner (2010), in order not to let employers realize that they were receiving identical resumes with different photos and names, we staggered over a few days the dispatch of the CVs to the same firms. For the same reason, we used different names and addresses.…”

Beauty and Academic Career

“…For example, Landry et al (2006) investigate the influence of attractiveness in the context of several charitable fund-raising strategies, finding higher attractiveness of female solicitors is associated with both increased contributions and participation. Most recently, Ruffle and Shtudiner (2015) investigate the role of physical attractiveness in the hiring process. They send over 5000 CVs in pairs to approximately 2600 advertised job openings.…”