A recruiter messages you at 2 p.m. But you’re in the middle of a task. So you finish what you’re doing, reread the message and write back a little after 3 p.m.
It seems innocent enough. But recent research suggests that in that hour, your odds of getting hired for that job drop by nearly half.
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That’s according to a June study published online in scholarly journal Management Science. The study was led by Einav Hart, an assistant professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business. Eric M. VanEpps of Vanderbilt University, Ovul Sezer of Cornell University and UC San Diego’s On Amir also took part in the research.
Their study covered roughly 11.7 million transactions on Fiverr, an online marketplace where clients hire freelancers for one-off jobs. According to the study, answering an employer’s first message an hour after it was received was tied to a 46% drop in the chance of landing the gig. Let a full day pass and your chances fall by about 90%.
Even single-digit minute delays can hurt you — a wait of five to 10 minutes can sharply cut a freelancer’s chances. This was true regardless of what the job was, how big the contract was or how much of a track record the freelancer had on the platform.
Why an hour costs you the job
To work out what was driving the pattern, researchers ran a second, separate set of tests: eight experiments with more than 8,600 participants. Each was asked to play the role of an employer, choosing between made up contractors to determine who they’d hire. Since it was a controlled experiment, no one was hired for real, but it allowed researchers to hold everything constant and change up replies and response times for participants as they saw fit.
What they found is responding to job opportunities late, did not automatically mean that someone else beat you to the punch. Even in cases where the employer hadn’t messaged anybody else, the slow responder still lost out.
Researchers said that employers read speed as a sign of a contractor’s character. Participants judged quick responders as friendlier and more capable and expected them to stay reachable down the line. This pattern held in scenarios involving specialized work, including catering jobs and medical care.
