Speed Is a Signal: When Faster Replies Increase Hiring Likelihood

When determining whom to hire, employers care about how quickly they receive replies from the job seekers and service providers they contact. Across transaction data from a large real-world marketplace (N = ∼11.66 million) and experiments (three main studies (total n = 3,603) and five supplemental studies (total n = 5,039)), we show that providers benefit from responding to employers’ messages quickly. First, we document substantial real-world consequences of reply speed in Fiverr marketplace transaction data (Study 1), finding a strong negative relationship between the length of delay in replying to a service request and the likelihood of securing a contract. Even delays of just 5–10 minutes dramatically reduce providers’ likelihood of being hired. In our experimental studies, providers who take less (versus more) time to reply are seen as more likely to be responsive in the future (Studies 2–4), make more positive impressions than slower responders (Study 3), and in turn, are more likely to be hired (Studies 2–4). Fast replies signal a provider’s future responsiveness and increase hiring likelihood independently from other signals of future responsiveness, such as a worker’s quality (Study 2) or the content of the message sent (Study 4). Together, our studies identify a distinct signal that employees can control to increase their hireability: replying to messages quickly. Empirically, every minute counts.

This paper was accepted by Jack Soll, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.06185.