Study finds women who wear low-cut tops in resume photos have better chance at interview

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A new study by Dr. Sevag Kertechian, a researcher at Paris-Sorbonne University, has found that women who wear a low-cut dress or top in a photo attached to a resume seriously increase their chances of getting a job interview — at least in France.

The findings, which were presented Tuesday in London, suggested that women hoping to interview for sales or accounting-related roles stood to benefit from such an outfitting choice to an unsettlingly high degree: Kertechian found that women who dressed less conservatively in their photos were 19 times more likely to secure a interview for the job they hoped to land.

Kertechian executed the study over a period of three years. He used two different photos each of two different women for a total of four resume packages, all of which touted nearly identical career experience. Each woman's more "revealing" resume photo was sent out to 100 different job applications, as was her more conservative resume photo, meaning between the two women, 400 photos were sent out with resumes. All resumes were sent for positions relating to either accounting or sales.

The findings were sad, but not shocking.

"Our results showed interesting trends as low-cut dresses significantly influenced the choice of the recruiters, even for accounting positions," he said. "Regardless of the job, whether customer-facing saleswoman or office-based accountant, the candidate with the low cut clothing received more positive answers."

Of the 200 total resumes sent out for accounting jobs, the resumes attached to the more revealing photos of the two women received 68 more interview offers than when they were attached to the more conservative photos.

Similar findings were reported for applications for the sales-related positions, with the more revealing photos garnering 62 more interview offers than the conservative photos.

As Kertechian concludes, this warrants the need for further studies and corroboration.

"The results were quite shocking and negative but not necessarily surprising," he added. "They show we need to conduct more research."

Alyssa Pereira is a staff writer for SFGATE. Follow her here on Twitter.