If you're a woman, whether you land a job interview could depend on something completely arbitrary - how attractive the hiring manager finds you.
Data from the job-search site Shiftgig, highlighted in Christian Rudder's book "Dataclysm," drew on a sample of 5,000 profiles and found the most attractive women score the most job interviews. (Job seekers generally post their photos with their profiles.)
Shiftgig focuses only on jobs for hourly and service workers, so this data doesn't include interviews for salaried occupations. But studies have shown that overall, attractive women get significantly more callbacks than women who were found less attractive.
In the case of hourly and service workers, however, the same isn't true for men. The number of job interviews men scored didn't change much with their perceived attractiveness.
Check it out:
As the chart shows, women in the 90th percentile of attractiveness got an average of about five interview requests, while women in the 10th percentile only got about one interview request.
This data - combined with the recent news that 90% of women in restaurant jobs that depend on tips report being sexually harassed at work - suggests women in service jobs face being sexually objectified.
What's particularly interesting, though, is that it's not just men who objectify female job candidates. The attractiveness curve holds true whether it's a man or woman hiring manager doing the interviewing.
Rudder writes in "Dataclysm": "Male HR reps weigh the female applicants' beauty as they would in a romantic setting ... and female employers view it through the same (seemingly sexualized) lens, despite there (typically) being no romantic intent."
Other research has found that attractive people also make more money, get promoted faster, and are often more successful. Attractive men enjoy these perks too, although often not at the same rate as women.
Crown Publishing Group
Chart reprinted from "Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking." Copyright © 2014 by Christian Rudder. Published by Crown Publishers, an imprint of Random House LLC.