According to new research from jobs site CV-Library, 61.3% of professionals in the UK have either been a victim of nepotism or have seen it occur in the workplace.

The survey of over 2,300 UK workers aimed to uncover how prevalent nepotism is in the UK workforce, and how it impacts employee attitudes at work. The research found that 81.4% of workers believe nepotism exists in the UK.

“The fact that nepotism is trickling through the UK’s workplaces and into the recruitment process is worrying,” Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library, said. “There are vast amounts of talented candidates out there and it’s sad to think that they may miss out on a job opportunity because of unfair favouritism. We tend to see this type of conduct occurring most for internal hires, which can be a frustrating process for both candidates and recruiters.”

For the survey, respondents shared their most common experience with 37.4% seeing favoured colleagues receive preferential treatment and 27.9% of respondents knowing colleagues get away with things that others would be disciplined for. Meanwhile, 5.3% of respondents have been personally offered a job through favouritism while 2.2% have offered someone a job through favouritism.

CV-Library has stated that one suggestion to stop nepotism in the workplace has been to stop interviews all together, a trend which is currently taking off in India, where recruiters have banned job interviews in favour of assessment tests.

When asked about the possibility of banning job interviews in the UK, 43% of respondents believed it would be a good solution. When asked why, 50.4% agreed that assessment tests are more effective than interviews at revealing a candidate’s qualifications.

“A lot of nepotism occurs internally, so banning interviews wouldn’t prevent that,” Biggins said. “It also fails to address the other problems associated with nepotism. Interviews are an essential part of the recruitment process and give a recruiter good insight into a candidate’s capabilities. It is also an opportunity for a candidate to assess whether they want to work for the company in question – depending solely on an assessment would be a huge mistake.”