Applicant attraction to new ventures: The combined effects of entrepreneurs’ physical attractiveness and gender

ABSTRACT

We investigate the combined effects of entrepreneurs’ physical attractiveness and gender on applicant attraction to new ventures. Relying on stereotype-based theories and using unique primary data, we confirm that physical attractiveness and gender biases exist: Job seekers evaluate the new ventures presented by either physically attractive or male entrepreneurs as more attractive prospective employers. Moreover, physically attractive male entrepreneurs are best positioned to attract applicants. Interestingly, the strength of these biases varies depending on job seekers’ gender. A severe gender bias exists among male job seekers, while this bias is very weak among female job seekers. Conversely, the physical attractiveness bias is ubiquitous but stronger among female job seekers. We advance research at the intersection of human resource management and entrepreneurship by complementing prior studies on the drivers of applicant attraction to new ventures and suggesting that stereotypes play a critical role in the early stage of the recruitment process.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical attractiveness
• gender
• applicant attraction
• new ventures
• stereotypes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ After recording the videos and before starting the data collection, two independent observers (i.e., the author who was not involved in video recording and one research assistant) evaluated the entrepreneurs’ displayed passion using an adapted version of the scale developed by Chen et al. (2009). The scale proposed by Chen et al. (2009) includes six items. Since the entrepreneurs presented their ventures while seated, we dropped the item “the presenter had energetic body movements” and used only the five items listed in Table 1. The values of α for the two observers are high (0.875 and 0.917) and the inter-rater reliability is significant (r = 0.799, p < .000, n = 2).

² To evaluate model fit, in addition to the χ² test, we considered two incremental-fit indexes – i.e., the comparative fit index (CFI) and the Tucker-Lewis index (TLI)—and three absolute-fit indexes—i.e., the Goodness of Fit index (GFI), the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), and the standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR). The CFI, TLI, and GFI values are above the standard cutoff values of 0.95, which indicate excellent model fit (Fan et al., 1999; Shevlin & Miles, 1998). The SRMR lower than the 0.08 cutoff value (Diamantopoulos & Siguaw, 2000) indicates an acceptable model fit. Instead, the RMSEA, with a value greater than the 0.06–0.08 cutoff (Hu & Bentler, 1999; MacCallum et al., 1996), indicates poor fit. However, in line with the combination approach proposed by Hu and Bentler (1999) that suggests evaluating model fit by combining two indexes instead of focusing on a single index, we conclude the fit is acceptable.

³ It is worth acknowledging that we also checked the robustness of the result on Hypothesis 5 by running the estimates of Model 2 separately for male and female study participants. As both additional estimates run on very small subsamples (62 and 50 observations, respectively), our explanatory variables were not significant.

⁴ Employer branding is “a targeted, long-term strategy to manage the awareness and perceptions of employees, potential employees, and related stakeholders with regards to a particular firm” (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004, p. 501). As such, it can help new ventures “to lure and attract, engage and retain their workforce” (Arasanmi & Krishna, 2019, p. 180), promoting a clear view of what makes a firm different and desirable as an employer (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004).

⁵ Often, picking the most attractive entrepreneur should not be difficult or time-consuming, as there is evidence that people tend to agree on their judgments of physical attractiveness; hence, some individuals are universally regarded as attractive (Nault et al., 2020). Of course, in many teams, there may be no evident differences among team members regarding physical attractiveness. In such cases, the team can select the entrepreneur who should present the firm to prospective applicants considering only aspects such as team members’ competencies, time availability, and ability to craft persuasive recruiting messages.

⁶ It is worth acknowledging that, despite the entrepreneurs presenting the same venture delivered the same information in their videos, we could not guarantee they displayed the same passion in speaking. Because differences in displayed passion could affect job seekers’ evaluations (Piva & Stroe, 2022), as we explain in the following section Measures, we controlled for displayed passion in the empirical analyses.