Every time you make a hiring decision, you likely have a set of metrics in mind to evaluate candidates. You filter them based on objective qualifications like years of experience and academic degrees, and perhaps you also incorporate more subjective considerations, like letters of recommendation and the quality of an applicant’s cover letter. In all likelihood, you reach out to multiple candidates, but how do you ultimately choose who to hire?

In new research published in Management Science, we identify an additional metric that managers consistently use, despite potentially being unaware of their own preference: job seekers’ reply speed.

We found that people regularly choose those candidates who respond quickly, even when they have a higher-quality option. In an analysis of real-world hiring decisions, candidate response delays by as little as a few minutes significantly impacted their likelihood of being hired.

To help leaders make the best hiring decisions, they need to first be aware of the way that speed factors into their decision-making and determine whether it truly helps them pick the best person for the job.

Why Response Speed Matters

We began this investigation by considering contract work and freelance opportunities. We analyzed over 11 million transactions on the global marketplace Fiverr and identified a dramatic, positive relationship between how quickly a job seeker replied to an employer’s initial reach out (like asking a question or following up on an application) and eventual hiring outcomes. On average, we found that a one-hour delay in response time by a job candidate made them 46% less likely to be hired. And those who responded more than 24 hours after receiving a direct message from a potential employer were 90% less likely to be hired compared with a candidate who responded immediately. In fact, response speed is so powerful a predictor that an average Fiverr worker who waited three extra hours to reply would hurt their own chances of being hired as much as it would if their rating (based on past jobs) was 20% lower.

This speed penalty held true across job types, contract size, wage rate, experience on Fiverr, and multiple other control variables.

Why is response speed such a compelling filter for managers? In addition to straightforward concerns about efficiency in filling jobs quickly, our research found that people consider response speed a valuable signal of other positive character traits, both when participants consider hiring for contract work and for longer-term employment.

In multiple follow-up experiments with over 8,600 total participants, we asked people to imagine hiring job candidates by considering their response to an employer’s initial message. They were also asked to rate the workers on factors such as competence, warmth, and communication skills.

In some experiments, participants evaluated a single applicant who either replied in one hour or in two days, and in others they were asked to evaluate multiple candidates whose response speeds were varied. The content of candidate responses was held constant—they described how the applicant planned to complete the job at hand (for example, a professional photographer described how they’d conduct a photo session). Across our experiments, response speed positively predicted evaluations of applicants’ competence, warmth, and expected future responsiveness, and participants reported that they would be far more likely to hire those who responded quickly.

Read the full article here.