A recent article in The Economist has highlighted a study that found women who are more attractive and include a photo with their resume are less likely to be offered a job interview than women who are deemed not as attractive.

Bradley Ruffle from Ben-Gurion University and Ze’ev Shtudiner from Ariel University Centre in Israel sent fictional job applications to more than 2,500 job vacancies.  They sent two similar resumes to each, with one major difference, one had a photo and the other didn’t.  All ‘applicants’ were previously graded for their attractiveness.

The results found attractive women were less likely to be offered an interview if they included a photograph with their application with, on average, an attractive woman needing to apply for 11 jobs before getting an interview, while an equally qualified ‘plain’ woman would need to send, on average, just seven.

It was a different story for men, with attractive men more likely to be called in for an interview if they included a photograph with the application.

The researcher’s conclusion was that human resources departments overall were staffed by women (in Israel 93 per cent of workers in charge of choosing who to invite for interviews are women) and therefore, jealousy was the cause for attractive women not getting invited for interviews.

Have you ever been influenced by the way a person looks about whether to interview them or hire them or not?

Do you think it is jealousy of another woman’s beauty that led to less ‘attractive’ women (or women who didn’t include a photo with their resume) being asked in for interviews?