Attractive women more likely to get jobs than unattractive counterparts

A new research has revealed that employers discriminate against "unattractive" job applicants, particularly women.

According to the study titled 'Searching for a job is a beauty contest', at an Italian university, researchers found that attractive women were called back 54 percent of the time while "unattractive" women only had a 7 percent callback rate, the Independent reported.

Researchers sent more than 1100 fake CVs, keeping the skills and qualifications same but different names, genders, and pictures, to more than 1500 advertised job openings.

The study found that attractiveness played a big part in the likelihood of making the second stage of the recruitment process, and a suggestion that attractiveness played a much bigger part in women's job prospects than men.

The paper concluded that "searching for a job seems to be just like a beauty contest: it is better for unattractive women to invest on aesthetic surgery than in education".