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When Glasses Land the Gig: Employers Still Choose Workers Who 'Look
the Part'
Research & Ideas
When Glasses Land the Gig: Employers Still Choose Workers Who 'Look
the Part'
07 Nov 2023Research & Ideas

When Glasses Land the Gig: Employers Still Choose Workers Who 'Look
the Part'

by Scott Van Voorhis
07 Nov 2023| by Scott Van Voorhis
Is an eyeglass-wearer more likely to be a strong web developer?
Employers that use online talent platforms tend to consider profile
photos in final hiring decisions, says research by Isamar Troncoso.
What's the role of recruiting platforms in preventing bias?
 
 
 
 
 
 

Seeking a programming gig? Wear glasses and keep your laptop in frame
if you want your profile picture to attract recruiters on hiring
platforms.

A new study finds freelancers are more likely to land work when they
"look the part" for a particular job. But, as companies increasingly
tap into online platforms to hire freelancers, the old saying that
looks can be deceiving still rings true.

Faced with myriad candidates who boast similar reviews on various
websites, harried employers are relying on profile photos to
determine, literally, whether an applicant looks like the right
person for the job, says Isamar Troncoso, assistant professor of
business administration at Harvard Business School. They often turn
to photos when they must compare two final candidates with comparable
skills.

    "It was from my own experience as a user on these platforms and
    realizing the contrast with the real world, where we don't
    usually share our pictures when we apply for a job."

However, employers on such platforms may not be particularly
well-served by these hunches, which are often rooted in biases and
stereotypes. In fact, having the right look does not strongly relate
to other measures of freelancers' knowledge and performance, notes
the study, which Troncoso conducted with Lan Luo of the University of
Southern California.

Troncoso stumbled into the online recruiting world in 2019 when she
was trying to hire a freelancer to support her own work. "It was from
my own experience as a user on these platforms and realizing the
contrast with the real world, where we don't usually share our
pictures when we apply for a job," Troncoso says. She recalls
wondering, "Why do we need them?"

Two million applications on Freelancer.com

The need for freelancers arises across industries, from marketing to
graphic design. Freelancers constituted 36 percent of the US
workforce in 2021, according to Upwork, a freelance platform. Aiming
to establish trust in this largely virtual gig world, many platforms
encourage freelancers to include a personal picture in their
profiles, Troncoso notes.

In their study, Troncoso and Luo looked at six months of data
collected by Freelancer.com in 2018. It covers more than 160,000
freelancers, over 2 million applications, and 63,014 completed jobs.

They found that freelancers with certain attributes were more likely
to land the job, using computer vision techniques to aid evaluations.
The study examined some of the characteristics that employers look
for in photos when assessing whether a candidate is a good fit. And
it is an effect, Troncoso, notes, that goes "above and beyond
demographics and beauty."

What makes the look "just right" depends on the job. For graphic
designers, for instance, it is better to be female, and to have a
high quality, professional-looking photo (with a small plus for
glasses). Other hacks for programmers: Grow a beard and keep a
computer visible, Troncoso finds.

Quantifying the value of looking the part

In fact, having particular characteristics is comparable to a 5
percent boost in pay--no small change given those gigging are often
required to pay some 10 percent of the work assignment or job to the
online platform. Having the right look was also comparable to a 0.3
percent increase in the stars in a freelancer's rating, significant
given the heavy competition for work.

    "Encouraging or mandating profile pictures can hurt the hiring
    prospects of freelancers who 'do not look the part'."

"Encouraging or mandating profile pictures can hurt the hiring
prospects of freelancers who 'do not look the part' and might
inadvertently make employers deemphasize arguably less noisy signals
of freelancers' quality (e.g., reputation and performance
variables)," write the authors.

Employers on these platforms--often small business owners or
individuals without extensive hiring experience--appear to be using
photos in the last stage of the decision-making process to pick
between freelancers with comparable ratings, the study notes.

Some lessons for platforms and job seekers

For online platforms, refining their ratings to provide a clearer
picture of the merits of each candidate could help mitigate
appearance-biases hiring decisions. Troncoso adds that platforms must
carefully design their recommendation systems, as practices like
suggesting multiple freelancers for a particular job could further
strengthen the use of pictures as tiebreakers.

There are also some relatively simple things freelancers can do to
improve their chances while also not feeding into the biases and
misperceptions that employers have about job fit, Troncoso suggests.

    "The findings support our conjecture that perceptions of job fit
    can go above and beyond well-known prejudice variables."

For example, having a good quality image--even a professionally taken
photo--can help an applicant stand out among blurry, amateur pictures.

"Overall, the findings support our conjecture that perceptions of job
fit can go above and beyond well-known prejudice variables (gender,
race, and beauty) and that they are job category specific," the
authors write.

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Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working Knowledge team at 
hbswk@hbs.edu.

Image: AdobeStock/ana_atchori and HBSWK

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Isamar Troncoso
Isamar Troncoso
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Contact
Send an email
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