Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by maxk42 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @05:48PM (#31198629)

I'm going to buck the trend and say that candidates with attractive photos are quite possibly actually more competent. When hiring, I consider the content of a resume and not its aesthetics. But the people who go the extra mile to add polish: An attractive, well-formatted resume; being well-dressed for an interview; and even adding polish to a photo - are likely candidates who express the added attention to detail I'm looking for in many roles. (Especially in design-focused roles.) Does it beat years of experience or technical competency? Absolutely not. But much like technical interviews not being a strong signal for a person's competency at a particular role they are still treated as a signal. You can have a polished photo without being an attractive person. So perhaps this study is actually measuring to some extent the perception of a person's professionalism and attention to detail rather than their inherent attractiveness. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Which isn't to say some people may be hired based on actual attractiveness rather than their perceived capabilities, which shouldn't be a factor generally. But if you're going to get indignant about people being hired based on looks then you'd better stop using sites more attractive than craigslist or products more attractive than crocs.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by sjhuang26 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:08PM (#31198819)

Perhaps the "polish" of the resume is a signal for "professionalism and attention to detail." But I worry that the professionalism of the resume is a signal mostly for wealth and social status, factors which should be ignored in the hiring process. So I think that unless the resume is atrociously formatted, its "polish" should be ignored.

I read an article on LinkedIn [1] touching on a similar issue. The ideal resume quality standard is "not a lesson that every school or household teaches equally" and giving undue consideration to it may be "creating unnecessary barriers to entry for certain groups."

However, I think your experience in the hiring process is valid and would be open to changing my mind.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisi...

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by TheDong on Thursday April 28, 2022 @09:10PM (#31200203)

Hiring is, as a whole, biased for the wealthy etc. Being privileged gives you a leg up on everything, from quality of education, to coping skills, to general health, so you would totally expect all parts of hiring to be biased massively towards privileged people.

I don't think a resume's level of polish is more biased towards social status than any other part of the process, and as such I think it's just as reasonable as anything else to filter on.

Anyway, resume quality is arguably just as relevant to a software job as being able to whiteboard code, if not moreso. Structuring design documents in a way that wealthy people like them (i.e. the old white dudes who run the company) is one of the most relevant job skills you can have to be honest.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by PeterisP on Friday April 29, 2022 @01:55AM (#31201882)

At least in some job roles (B2B sales, management, professional services like consulting or legal, PR, media, etc) the social status and personal network is a genuine advantage that makes them more effective in that job role and more useful for the employer, so it should not be ignored. In some jobs you're hiring them to do a task within your organization, but in many other jobs you're hiring them to influence others outside your organization - and there status, connections and reputation are pretty much a bona fide occupational qualification.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by dijonman2 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:36PM (#31199088)

> But I worry that the professionalism of the resume is a signal mostly for wealth and social status

What?

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by noirbot on Thursday April 28, 2022 @11:16PM (#31200993)

It's just generally easier to do more things well/professionally when you're well off and have the time to work on it or hire someone to do it.

It's similar to the issues with standardized testing in schools. If your parents are wealthy and able to get you better test prep or tutoring, you'll do better on the test, and likely be actually more academically successful aside from it. It doesn't mean that one should totally ignore that signal, but it does confound it if you're trying to be fair about things in a more holistic sense.

I think of it in tech as being acutely similar to folks who complain about recruiters who care a lot about your side projects or OSS contributions. If you're rich and successful, you have more time for those sorts of things than someone who's less well off and taking care of their family or such outside of work. That doesn't mean that someone who maintains a major OSS project isn't likely a good engineer, but that you should understand that not everyone who is a good engineer can casually do a second job on the side.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by erosenbe0 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @11:36PM (#31201111)

If not mentioned or on the resume, explicitly asking whether a candidate has contributed to OSS or has done side projects outside of work is extremely inappropriate. The answer may be, "No, I attend temple nightly after going to occupational therapy for my disability and taking care of my children." Then you will have to document this for HR because you done gone messed up.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by TheDong on Friday April 29, 2022 @02:49AM (#31202147)

That answer is not proportionate to the question, and the question is totally fine.

You can ask a candidate "have you worked with React before". You can ask a candidate "It's not on your resume, but do you have security certifications". You can ask them "do you have any OSS projects you contribute to or like".

Those are all reasonable questions.

The imagined answer you mention "may" happen for any question. You didn't mess up if you ask "do you know React?" and the candidate answers "my last job used Vue, and I didn't have time to learn it on my own due to having 2 religions, 6 disabilities, and 12 kids, so no".

Asking a candidate for work-related experience is not "extremely inappropriate", and your imagined answer is not realistic.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by noirbot on Friday April 29, 2022 @08:36AM (#31204322)

Exactly. I've always been told in hiring/legal meetings that it's ok if the candidate voluntarily discloses information about their religion/race/family status, you just can't go looking for it, and you probably shouldn't follow up about it.

Essentially, as long as your question has a reasonable answer that doesn't involve bringing up any of the protected attributes, it's fine.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by tempnow987 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @07:45PM (#31199623)

I'm somewhat curious if many indications of competence can be considered indications of wealth / social status?

Does this disqualify them from consideration?

Resume quality IS actually pretty easy to pick up on. Some folks go totally overboard for non-design roles - I'd say there probably is a tasteful middle ground (ie, not super long with pages and pages - I've had folks do essentially powerpoints) and not just a mono font list in all caps (often some kind of auto resume spam mess). If you take the time to do a 1 or 2 page MAX clean resume, quasi responsive to posting, with a brief email note you are ahead of 60% of candidates already. With this hiring market it doesn't matter - employers will chase you anyways.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by renewiltord on Friday April 29, 2022 @03:23AM (#31202350)

Some fools will spell JAVA and GIT as things on their resume. Massive negative signal. This one I honestly calibrated: biggest sign you’re a clown is if you call this shit JAVA. Not even Fortran calls itself that.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by faeriechangling on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:19PM (#31198925)

Prejudice wouldn’t be such an issue if there weren’t a grain of truth in it. Pretty much any superficial indicator that you’ve lived a harder life than average can be used as a way to guess that you might be a worse employee due to some lingering baggage and a less privileged upbringing.

The ugly just sadly don’t have affirmative action to compensate for this sort of thing.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by dumpHero2 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @07:50PM (#31199660)

I wasn't prepared for such harsh truth today.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by rramadass on Friday April 29, 2022 @08:55AM (#31204480)

The Secret of Success is Sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made - Jean Giraudoux/George Burns (some versions replace Sincerity with Honesty).

People who have been dealt a bad hand by Nature need to be aware of all sorts of cognitive biases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) and then find ways to bypass them to focus on their strengths.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by Retric on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:06PM (#31198794)

I found the opposite. People with simple utilitarian resumes tended to have more actual accomplishments, while people who focused on what their résumé looked like tended to have glaring issues they where trying to hide.

Though I suspect this varies quite a bit by role.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by antiterra on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:12PM (#31198857)

Have worked at big SV companies where HR is forwarding the text paste of the resume with no corrected format. I would never tell someone not to make their resume look polished, but I have definitely seen people get lucrative jobs with a jumbled mess.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by jjeaff on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:04PM (#31198769)

You used the qualifier "especially for design centered roles". I would maybe amend that to "only for design centered roles and a few others".

If I want to hire a hard core algorithm coder or a top level security specialist, I might not consider a neat and polished resume a negative signal, but I certainly wouldn't consider a less polished resume a negative signal. Because my experience with the type of people that are very good at those skills is that many couldn't care less about their profile photo or the font they use on their resume.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by _Parfait_ on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:05PM (#31198783)

"But if you're going to get indignant about people being hired based on looks then you'd better stop using sites more attractive than craigslist or products more attractive than crocs."

Your first point raised about someone caring about their looks and the way their presented is a good one. But this last quote is strange.. If you're being hired for a non customer facing role do you really think this craigslist comparison is a fair one? I can get as gussied up as I can for a photo, but is it fair that the guy that looks more like Jake Gyllenhaal got hired even though I have a better skill set?

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by maxk42 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:17PM (#31198902)

If that had happened, then no. But it didn't.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by dekelpilli on Thursday April 28, 2022 @08:47PM (#31200056)

> In study 1, beautifying filters increased perceived hireability irrespective of job type

But it does.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by maxk42 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @10:26PM (#31200699)

And as I said: That isn't fair. But it also doesn't detract from my point that the people who put more effort into their applications are likely to also put more effort into their work. Once again: It's not a strong signal, but it's a signal.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by tubalcain on Thursday April 28, 2022 @11:53PM (#31201214)

The polish you speak of is not the relevant factor in determining attractiveness. Height, facial features and non-obesity are the characteristics described, and with the exception of obesity, are largely immutable.

In other words, a professionally done photo of a goblin-like human will be viewed more negatively than a selfie of an attractive person.

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by maxk42 on Friday April 29, 2022 @07:09PM (#31211655)

And yet the study only considered the application of filters, which are pure "polish".

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Re:Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beau... by vmception on Thursday April 28, 2022 @05:55PM (#31198683)

You can also get a feel for how well somebody can a see computer screen or at all based on the filter result they choose

superimposed eye lashes that are a little misplaced

extremely blurred skin far beyond removing blemishes

lol

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