Don’t send CV in before lunch if you want the job, study finds

AVOID sending your CV in just before lunch as recruiters dedicate less time to potential employees between 11am and midday, a study has found.

Employers tend to view job applicants’ credentials more quickly in that hour as well as towards the end of the working day, between 5pm and 6pm, according to researchers at the London School of Economics.

They analysed the search behaviour of more than 40,000 recruiters on a Swiss employment website and studied how much time they spent looking at each profile and whether or not they contacted the jobseeker.

Individuals from immigrant and minority ethnic groups experienced up to 19 per cent lower contact rates, the study found.

Dr Dominik Hangartner, co-author of the research, said: “Our results demonstrate recruiters treat otherwise identical jobseekers who appear in the same search list differently, depending on their immigrant or minority ethnic background. Unsurprisingly, this has a real impact on who gets employed.

“These results suggest unconscious biases, such as stereotypes about minorities, have a larger impact when recruiters are more tired and fall back on ‘intuitive decision-making’.

“We are optimistic that at least part of the discrimination that we document in this study can be overcome by redesigning recruitment platforms.

“For example, more relevant information such as a candidate’s work experience and education could be placed at the top, and details which might indicate ethnicity or gender, such as name or nationality, could appear much lower down the CV.”

The findings were published in the journal