> Photos on resumes are never a good idea

Except when they are the standard in a culture other than yours. A CV without a picture in France is a bit suspect and it will leave the feeling of something incomplete.

When you search for "photo cv" in French, you will see a lot of sites that start with claiming that the photo is not compulsory, cannot be required and that the lack of a photo cannot be a reason not to assess your CV. Just this shows that the reality is that it is expected.

A lot of discussions is around discrimination. If your name sounds [put your most feared origin here], you can hide the picture as much as possible but this will not make a 12th generation Brittany-ion (no idea how someone from the Brittany region is called).

Then there is the address which also reveals a lot and at the end of the day the fact that you did not put a picture is likely to be against you.

That's life my friend. Anything you do that sticks out from the other sheeps will make some people wonder about you.

Personally I'm fine with that since my end goal in life is not about bending over for others to gain advantages or avoid disadvantages.

I never use Web cam at work for example. I'm usually the only person not on camera in phone conferences. I'm sure it's a disadvantage but I'm somehow still doing fine. :)

Of course it is fine. Until your CV is seen as "unusual" and among 100 others it just gets less attention.

If you are unique, sure, you can have an extravagant and highly exotic CV. It is not the reality of many people, especially when someone needs to ask whether they should put a picture or not.

Someone from Brittany is a Breton

Ah, like in French. Good to know, thanks.

I'm french and I don't think I have ever put my picture on a CV and I never had anyone tell my something about that. But maybe I'm not in the norm?

I also am often reading CVs and they never have a picture. Most of them don't even have a name, just initials.

This is interesting. Which industry are you in?

I think I never saw a CV without a name, and rarely one without a photo. This is in high tech.

I'm in web development. We usually ask a recruiting company to send us CVs and they don't have any photo or name.

That way we make our choice based only on the person's experiences (thi also prevents us from contracting this person directly, which is fair game I think).

The only time we see names is if the person does not come from a recruiting company, and even then there are not pictures.

Address isn't mandatory either.

As a matter of fact, photos are getting less and less common on CV's in France.

Nothing is mandatory on a CV. You could send an anonymous one too.

As for the photos, i am not sure how many CVs you see, but the ~100-200 I saw in tech across the last 5 years all had a picture (except a very few ones, which I noticed). I do not pay much attention to the picture because of experience (I am horribly bad on pictures, and some of the best people I worked with were extravagant), but this is me.

There is nothing legal or illegal there, just a matter of tradition and therefore not having one makes you stad out, not necessarily in a good way.

This is very dependent on the country / culture.

In Germany, for example, a resume without a photo will most likely not even get considered.

As someone with experience on the hiring side, I occasionally help newbies by providing reviews of their resumes/portfolios. I typically tell them to drop photos because that's the norm here in North America, but if I had to generalize, my advice would be to follow the norms of the country/city where you are applying.

The rationale is simple and pragmatic: employers want to find the gold nuggets, but snowflake resumes scream lack of experience and can easily be filtered out in early stages of the funnel.

Inexperienced people often make these intricate resumes w/ fancy templates, but all that tells me is they're fluffing it up to compensate for lack of content - sometimes in a quest for beauty, they don't even spell out their contact information!

My advice to those people is to go talk to a recruiting agency or a local job board. They can help find and correct all of those faux-pas, catered to the local market expectations.

> they don't even spell out their contact information!

I suffered with 10 years of Indian recruiter spam in my voicemail. They're never getting my phone again.

I've lived in Germany for 7 years and never once have I added a picture to my resume. It's been no trouble in getting interviews and job offers. I work in tech though. So the experience could vary depending on your industry

Why do they require a photo in the resume?

I'm curious about the reason.

You are asking the wrong question. They expect it because it's the norm in Germany. Human is psychology is such that a resume with a photo is just more memorable, so it became the norm because applicants do it. Bias is less of a concern in a country that is historically more homogeneous.

They just want to know whom they're dealing with. And I don't think it's such a big deal because once they invite you to an interview, they will know what you look like anyway.

It is a big deal, though. Getting to the interview is the first hurdle.

There have been several variations of a famous study where they sent identical resumes to hundreds of companies, with the single change that there was a stereotypical "white" name vs "Black" name at the top.

The studies consistently find that the "white" names get far more call backs.

Granted, those studies were in the US, but I'd be very surprised if a similar effect did not show up in most European countries.

It’s also not just race but beautiful people, especially with symmetric facial features are subconscious biases that presumably plays a role. I don’t know if there are studies around this, I’d bet there would be a huge bias.

Photos are completely unnecessary and mostly nuisance IMO.

Yep, they did studies in Germany with German sounding names and Turkish sounding names: https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2010-02/studie-bewerber-aus...

Note that these studies were done with resumes without photos. You don't need a picture to be biased.

Right, exactly. The name alone was enough.

Who says the picture would have the same affect? What if it turns out there's less racial bias when a picture is added?

This is a really good point, one I hadn't throught about. What if the name creates a bias because it conjures up an image that is nothing like the person - while their picture "undoes" that.

Not saying I necessarily believe that happens, but I really appreciate the logic of your point/question.

While it's worth pointing out the limits of our knowledge, I wonder why you appear to think it's just as likely that the photo will eliminate the racial bias? If studies have shown that a black-sounding name means fewer jobs, I would think the default hypothesis, until proven otherwise, would be that a black photo would result in the same ends.

Thinking that it might as well go the other way seems to imply that there's just something weird about names, and that people don't really have racial biases. But this charitable view of the world has been shown false time and again.

In any case, a version of the study with live people, instead of photos, has also been done, and, not surprisingly, shown the same result:

> Other studies have also examined race and employment. In a 2009 study, Devah Pager, Bruce Western and Bart Bonikowski, all now sociologists at Harvard, sent actual people to apply for low-wage jobs. They were given identical résumés and similar interview training. Their sobering finding was that African-American applicants with no criminal record were offered jobs at a rate as low as white applicants who had criminal records.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-stic...

Always beware 'studies' and 'experts'...

And they can skip your resume if they don't like your looks or skintone.

If that were the case, getting to the interview phase wouldn't provide you much benefit anyway.

True. But sometimes one person looks over resumes and different people, or a couple people, handle the interview itself.

Or your age: https://www.psychnewsdaily.com/older-job-seekers-on-linkedin...

It is a big deal. How you look has absolutely nothing to do with how you’ll perform at a job. Photos only enable discrimination, there really is no other purpose.

I assume this depends on the role as well? I'm not German (nor do I live there), but if someone told me I'd have to put a picture on my CV for an engineering role, and I'd be very weirded out, especially as a foreigner.

Not in IT, though.

Depends very much on the country. With a photo, in some, your resume will immediately thrown out to avoid any repercussions for a possible bias that did not lead to hiring. In others, without a photo, your resume will not be read.

To play Devil's advocate, are they really never a good idea? I agree with your logic about bias but bias can cut both ways. If someone's look tends to help them get hired why wouldn't they play that card?

I don't have a photo on my resume and have never seen one used in the US, but my LinkedIn photo (which I assume everyone involved in hiring sees) is carefully chosen to represent the mix of attributes (friendlynes, confidence, curiosity, and many others) that I think are relevant for roles I go after. Surely my photo also 'reveals' my enthinicy and gender - but my name does too.

There are also countries and industries where a photo is anywhere from expected to required.

I had a lawyer friend who said that photos were expected on resumes and websites, something she hated despite the fact that she felt she benefited from it. Part of it is that firms and clients want to see a professional image, but yeah, it also brings in all the usual gender/age/ethnic biases.

To answer "why wouldn't they play that card" - plenty of women know their looks/gender might get them in the door when it wouldn't otherwise, and feel like imposters even if they are highly qualified and a great match for the position.

They may want to work at the kind of company that hires them because of their accomplishments, not one that says "oh, we need more women." One reason: a company that hired them because they were a woman may have done so just to fill a quota and there's no genuine interest in them succeeding and advancing...whereas another employer might see their talent and work to help them succeed. Or a company that hires just to fill quotas might put women in positions they aren't actually qualified for. Etc.

> not one that says "oh, we need more women."

First time I heard about "minority quotas" I just didn't believe it. But then YouTube got sued for doing exactly that [0]

Do quotas actually help minorities? To me it sends the signal that everyone from a top N school who is a white or asian male is here because he's qualified. The others who knows? Maybe the recruiter was so close to hitting his incentive that he lowered the bar.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-hiring-for-some-positio...

To add, it's common to see a headshot in an acting resume.

If I was white, I would definitely put my photo on my resume. But I'm not.

I'm a senior executive with impeccable credentials: top 1 bank, top 3 engineering school, ivy league undergrad, executive at Series A firm. top notch names on my resume.

Except on LinkedIn, the majority of inbounds i get are recruiters trying to get me to join in as entry level. I'm not speaking about mass-mailings, i'm speaking about entire screening conversations where they are telling me about this "promising" entry level role. Occasionally, i'll get a good recruiter pitching me a VP or CTO role (as I would expect) but these are rare.

My white friends say they are constantly pitched with VP and Director roles.

As a counter-anecdote, I haven't held a job with a title including anything less than "senior" in 10 years, have worked for both startups and companies with very recognizable names, and at least half of the recruiter requests are for entry level positions.

I have only once been pitched a position that was equivalent or higher than my highest sounding job title, and the recruiter responded with "Sorry, we reached out to you by mistake."

It's pretty tough to predict which way that's going to go. I'm positive I've been immediately rejected from jobs because I'm a white guy that went to BYU and that's pretty clear on my resume, but there are probably other jobs where that would help me out.

I know forum comments are throwaways and mean nothing mean here -- but if you're job hunting with a resumé you might be judged by spelling and you have a mangling pattern to your spelling of "friendliness" that, if replicated elsewhere, could be making you look bad.

On LinkedIn photos really should be removed as well, you're correct about bias. I don't put a photo on LinkedIn, and I don't think anyone should. You do not need to know anything about my physical appearance when I'm applying for jobs. This is in sharp contrast to certain countries where you're supposed to take the most attractive photo you can to send it with your resume. I swear to God some of these resumes look more like personal ads.

LinkedIn is still my go-to resource for job hunting, but I want to vomit a bit when I see people trying to turn it into Facebook. Get your validation somewhere else, and let me have a website where I can look for a job.

Aren't resumes technically personal ads?

Brag as much as you can in your resume. Never be humble.

Well, some people do remember visuals. Imagine HR who's been going through hundreds of profiles a day. Photo may be a good tool to create association (for example, HR can think: 'that guy in red shirt had experience in Google). On the other hand, just any picture can be used, not a photo to solve this problem:)

LinkedIn is in a weird place. It’s half a networking tool and half a recruiting tool. In my opinion photos are fine for networking but should be verboten for hiring and recruiting.

In truth, I really don’t know what to think about photos for LinkedIn. Both sides of the argument are compelling.

This is childish. You could say the same thing about putting your name or even the company names you worked for on your resume. People hiring want to get to know you, they have to work with you, if you want some pretend construct that focuses in the appearance of some being "unbiased" you can probably look for a government job. Otherwise, people will see you, interact with you, and learn about you eventually.

That said, I have rarely seen a photo on a resume. Most people have LinkedIn now so hiring folks have a photo that way regardless. The only place I consistently see photos is on professional services (consulting etc.) "resumes" which are usually more a blurb about you and the kind of projects you've worked on. In that case they are standard, and they would be on a lawyer or accountants website.

This is true. In fact many larger companies will automatically delete any resume with a photo, regardless of your fit for the role.

This is because they'd like to avoid any liability for any kind of bias, so they make it an across-the-board policy.

Source: I'm a recruiter and have worked with over 400 companies, of which about 20 have this policy.

They are an advantage if you think your physical appearance will be an advantage.

If you are the same 'colour' as the place your applying to (i.e. if that's relevant) it might help.

If you are physically attractive (but not too attractive) - it can help.

Basically - it allows a kind of discrimination which usually we don't want ... unless you think you're going to be on the positive end of that!

And I beg to disagree with 'memorable' - we are designed to remember faces - not resumes.

While maybe not so 'impressionable' - a nice photo definitely helps the memory.

It also adds a human connection.

For technical roles, it might not make much of a difference but for almost all non-technical roles, it will probably help if you have a 'charismatic face'.

I am very pretty.

This can be advantage or disadvantage depending on who is looking. Either way you add more uncertanty by having photo on your CV.

I remember one time some person included a photo on their resume and it was passed around the office with everyone laughing. The photo wasn't even bad. It was just funny to have a photo on the resume.

If you are good looking, they are a very good idea.

If you old and look younger than you are, they are an even better idea since they distract from your age.

I do think that photos on resumes vary in some countries. Some countries prefer photos, but others don't. But I agree with you that they don't print well and don't look good.

You must be American. All over SEA they are pretty normal.

I think it depends a lot on the industry as well. In some industries it is common to paste photos, in others it will look very strange

It really depends. If you're attractive and certain beneficial information can be gleaned from your resume (e.g. things that recruiters are measured on come performance review time), I can certainly see it helping.