People who are overweight are considered less desirable by potential employers, who perceive them to be less productive and hard working.

A survey of HR and recruitment professionals found that more than half admitted to finding obesity to be an undesirable trait, using it as a marker of personality and predicted work ethic.

This follows U.S. research released last month which found that obese people are less productive in the workplace and more prone to injury.

More than half of HR and recruitment professionals surveyed admitted to finding obesity to be an undesirable trait and a marker of predicted work ethic

Researchers from Virginia Tech and the University at Buffalo assessed how long it took for people of various sizes to perform certain tasks and found that obese people had, on average, 40 per cent shorter endurance times.

Those taking part were asked to complete a range of tasks with the same levels of activity as in manufacturing settings.

The poll comes just after the case of Karsten Kaltoft v Billund Kommune in Denmark, where an obese child-minder, who was sacked for being unable to bend down to tie up children's shoelaces, is claiming obesity should be considered a disability.

In the new survey, Thomas Mansfield, a solicitors practice, wanted to gauge the level of negative stereotyping of obese people during the recruitment process.

The results showed that when faced with the option of two candidates with identical qualities - the only difference being that one is obese - more than half of respondents said they would prefer to hire the 'normal' candidate.

More than a third of respondents admitted they found it hard to be impartial towards obese candidates.

And 56 per cent of those polled said obesity was a valuable marker when determining candidate character and predicted performance.

25stone Karsten Kaltoft is trying to change the law to make obesity a registered disability after he was sacked by his local authority in Denmark for being unable to perform his duties due to his size

Given that recent NHS figures suggest that 62 per cent of adults in the UK are either overweight or obese, the results of the poll suggest recruiters may be squandering talent due to a tendency to negatively stereotype, lawyers at Thomas Mansfield said.

Neill Thomas, a senior partner at the practice, said that during recruitment there was a clear bias against obese people and this prevents recruiters filling jobs with the best candidates.

He said: 'The findings of the study reveal the problem of bias faced by obese people during the recruitment and selection process which potentially means that the most suitably qualified candidate does not get chosen.

'This highlights that people continue to hold stereotypical assumptions that obese people are responsible for their own weight and any problems they suffer are self-inflicted – whereas it might be the case that there is an underlying medical condition.'