Not according to my experience. I auto generated cover letters using some Python and this gave me 60% success rate. No one reads the cover letters.

Photo opens the door to early discrimination. What next, marital status?!

Maybe I'm not thinking about it properly, but if they would discriminate based on my photo, they'll probably do so once they see me in the flesh and give me some excuse to not hire me. I'd rather not go through the wasted effort of making it to a interview and they instead ghost me so I can focus on an employer that does want me.

You are susceptible to bias at every stage. Maybe your application is filtered by a biased AI, maybe it’s a person, but you are giving more reasons to reject you before reaching the actual recruiters.

It’s far easier for a recruiter to discard a resume because of unconscious bias than the allow it to interfere at the interview level

It's very common to put marital status and even the number of kids in some countries.

I’m sure it is. That gives plenty of opportunity for discrimination.

Interestingly, it should be 'What before, marital status?!'.

Check out the early Bill Gates resume from the 90s, he listed his weight and marital status and apparently that was like totally normal.

90s seems late for that sort of thing in the US. But it definitely used to be pretty common.

That it's Bill Gates should probably indicate that "90s" is wrong: what job is Bill Gates applying for in the 90s?

It's actually from the mid-70s, apparently.

You're right of course. Duh. Yes, and mid-70s makes a lot more sense for that kind of thing.