Comparative Affect of Candidates’ Physical Attractiveness between Resume Screening and Interview Process Outcomes. Empirical Research for Greece

Abstract

Many factors can affect recruiters, personnel managers or employers during employee selection process such as degrees and other typical qualifications of candidates the possess of the right transferable skills, the knowledge of job market, their working experience, the combination of personal attributes, self presentation skills, personality. Apart of them and many others factors, there is a consensus in a large extent, that candidates’ physical attractiveness can affect recruiters’ decisions during employment selection process, both in first stage of screening their curriculums’ vitae, as well as in the second stage which is the interview hiring process. This study aims to search the role of employee candidates’ physical attractiveness and its comparative impact between first stage of screening applicants according to their resumes and second stage of hiring decisions during employment interview. For this purpose, an empirical research has been conducted in order to explore the importance and relative impact of candidates’ physical attractiveness in decisions and selection process outcomes. In particular we asked two hundred and sixty recruiters’, personnel managers’ and employers in Greece about the impact of candidates’ physical attractiveness might have in their recruiting and hiring decisions. Results show that physical attractiveness influence recruiters decisions and affect selection outcomes in both selection stages. The impact is higher and statistically more significant in interview process. Physical attractiveness also compared to resume quality in order to explore relative impact among these factors. Results show a greater influence of resume quality than physical attractiveness.