I don't necessarily agree. There are jobs where appearance is important, especially customer facing ones.

And I'm sure I'll catch flak for this but if you're obese, slovenly, or unhealthy looking that kinda has to factor in. I would certainly question how well you could handle a job if you can't even handle your personal life. Discrimination sucks but it's just a reality. Everyone does it, and sometimes it's a necessary "evil".

I think if you've got good resume showing your aptitude most places are going to care less about your appearance. Besides, they're going to see your face in the interview anyway. So, if you think your appearance is causing companies to avoid you they're not going to suddenly change when you show up for the interview and you're probably just wasting your time.

Discrimination (hopefully) is a small percentage of most of our lives, but it is real. Black hands holding a product in a craigslist ad gets fewer hits. If you're a racist and buy a bicycle, get there and the guy is black, you'd probably still buy it, because you're already there

I think this can go both ways. As a black person, I honestly prefer when people reach out to me via Linkedin because I at least know they are aware of my race ahead of time. I've had plenty of interviews where, because I have a white name and sound and act white over the phone, people have treated me completely differently after meeting in person. I'd rather just be able to be up front about it.

In the US, UK etc. yes, but in Germany and DACH region, employers still expect a photo in the traditional resume, especially for non-tech/skilled positions or in more traditional companies (Audi, BMW, etc.). Heard it's the same in southern Europe.

Still irks me that they haven't outlawed this yet.

But I don't think things would improve much if they did though, as if an employer wants to not hire you because of your race/gender/nationality etc, it can do it anyway in a later stage, with some cookie-cutter excuse, regardless of photo/no-photo in your resume.

First, you're increasing the probability of discrimination by making it possible earlier on. The number of people that could exclude you goes up; e.g. the initial, possibly external, recruiter (who is screening hundreds of candidates) who would never otherwise have seen your face, can now discriminate on appearance.

Secondly, people are less discriminatory to people they've actually met and gotten to know somewhat. A picture of an anonymous person, with very little other information to go off of, may affect someone's judgement quite strongly; whereas, when you actually meet and talk with someone, have a lot of other information about them, and they are no longer anonymous, physical appearance will have less influence.

https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/discrimination-h...

That makes sense. It's sort of like how I wouldn't expect someone from Kentucky to have the same internship opportunities as someone from the bay area, but if I cant see their location then all I have to go off of is the listed experience.

> It's the first place I go when I look for work. Recruiters will hit you up once you have at least a few years of experience.

I have the exact same experience. I try to ignore the news feed as much as possible because it became a Covid flame war. To me, it is no longer a 'Business oriented social network', I now use it as a glorified job board with resume profiles.

>My physical appearance should have nothing to do with my hireabilty

but actually why?

you know - if you have two equally skilled people...

and one of them has tattoos on 90% of his/her body and your company works for banking industry, then is it pros or con?

It's a huge pro.

"Wow, they hired him despite the stigma around his looks in our hugely conservative business, he's that good."

Same thing with hiring a non-minority candidate from a school that's known to do a lot of affirmative action, you know he's there for the right reasons.

The problem is that you probably won't get that far if an employer doesn't like the color of your skin, your gender, that you're in a wheelchair, etc. Your resume will probably go in the trash as soon as they see your photo.

But if you can at least get into an interview, you have an opportunity to sell yourself as a candidate.

The problem itself is real of course, I just don't think that having or not having a profile picture will make any difference. And there's other factors too - do I need to hide my name so I don't give away that I'm from a foreign country or that I'm a woman?

I don't want to pretend that I have a solution for racism/sexism/etc. in hiring but I really don't think that tiptoeing around people's prejudices is the way to do it.

Racism can be very subtle and insidious, though.

You don't always need to talk them out of beliefs like "we are going to take your country away from you," it's more about dispelling unexamined gut beliefs like "the best candidate will probably visually resemble the people who have been good in that role before." The latter is less difficult to overcome if you can get yourself into the face-to-face stage.

This is not a world where "only your brain" matters. If you have brain and a decent surface (i.e., face, body, voice, manners) then you'll beat the ones who "only" have brain.