Why playing hard to get can backfire in the job market

By Stephen Beech

Job hunters are best replying fast to potential employers, suggests a new study.

Business researchers consistently found that "playing hard to get" simply doesn't work in the jobs market.

Many people looking for work of a new job worry that responding too quickly can make them seem too available or even desperate.

But the new study, published in the journal Management Science, suggests they may be concerned about the wrong thing.

Combining data from 11.6 million marketplace interactions with experiments involving both job candidates and service providers, the American research team found that employers view fast replies as a "positive" signal of future responsiveness.

No evidence that delaying a response improves hiring prospects was discovered.

Instead, employers consistently preferred faster responders.

Study co-author Professor On Amir said: "People have this intuition that playing hard to get is somehow useful.

"We find the opposite is true."

The study combined real-world marketplace data from Fiverr, a platform connecting employers with freelancers, with three main experiments involving more than 3,600 participants and five supplemental studies involving another 5,000 participants.

The Fiverr data showed that a one-hour delay was associated with a 46% reduction in hiring likelihood, while a full-day delay reduced hiring likelihood by roughly 90%.

The effect persisted even when participants had access to other information, including ratings and the content of a response.

The experiments suggested that faster responders made better first impressions.

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They were judged to be warmer and more competent – and most importantly, as likely to be more responsive in the future.

The research team concluded that employers use reply speed to infer what someone might be like to work with.

Study co-author Einav Hart, assistant professor of management at George Mason University, Virginia, said: "Speed is a signal.

"People see a quick response as a sign that you'll be attentive to their needs in the future, not just right now,"

The research team also found a gap between what people said about response speed and what they did.

Participants reported that same-day responses would be just fine, yet consistently preferred much faster responders when making their actual hiring decisions.

The researchers cautioned against reducing the findings to a simple rule about replying as quickly as possible.

Amir, from the University of California San Diego's Rady School of Management, said: "Speed matters because people use it as information.

"But there isn't an equal sign between speed and responsiveness. Authenticity matters, too."

The researchers found that while response speed influenced hiring decisions, people also paid attention to whether a response appeared personalized and attentive.

They say that distinction may become increasingly important as AI makes instant responses easier to generate.

Amir said: "While automated replies can eliminate delays, they may not convey the thoughtfulness or engagement that people ultimately value.

"In the experiments, faster replies lost their appeal when recipients believed them to be generated automatically or by an AI."

He added: "The takeaway is straightforward: once someone reaches out, there appears to be little advantage in making them wait.

"But a quick response is most effective when it is also genuine."