We're not trying to turn hiring into a popularity contest or a casting call. The point of video or a photo isn’t to favor looks — it’s to give people a chance to show personality, communication skills, or walk through a project — especially in roles where that matters (e.g. PMs, founders, designers, etc.).
That said, both video and photo are optional. We’ve seen that for many candidates, especially those early in their careers or from non-traditional backgrounds, a short video can dramatically increase response rates — not because of appearance, but because it humanizes them and cuts through the noise of generic applications.
We’re 100% aligned that character and substance matter most — we just want to give people more ways to show that, not perform for it.
And I don't know if building another platform with a feed will solve that problem. Because the existence of a social feed itself might be the issue here. But then what do you have if you don't have a feed? Is that a "platform" anymore if all that's on there are peoples' resumes?
I feel that building the next LinkedIn is really building the next LinkedIn community. That can't necessarily be done through computer code. I mean, look at the kind of community building that it took to build out HN.
This exists because there is limited courage to call this out. There are not many polite ways to tell someone this, you would need people in their life to pull them aside and point it out. It's very similar to being the friend that pulls someone outside and explains they need to brush their teeth (someone has to do this, with love). Maybe more working professionals need to blog about this so the broader community can be educated on behavior when it comes to excess vanity and general manners.
For example, it's simply rude to broadcast your new job when some people are struggling with it (will they ever get one? will they get fired? are they good enough?). Just the very fact that there are "some" should be enough to kickstart one's manners, even if that "some" is not a lot of people.
It's simply rude to continuously market things (anything) when there are people literally ... stressing themselves over the pressure of competition. Again, as an example, a person constantly marketing their looks is putting stress and pressure on many others - this is a simple fact. The same goes for those with wealth and opportunity.
To be fair, LinkedIn is nominally a professional networking site. Broadcasting your new job is absolutely in scope for that site.
It’s the “what the death of my dog taught me about viral content marketing” or “how my child losing her soccer game made me a better manager” posts that are out of control.
My personal favorites are people bragging about working during their wedding / funeral / vacation. “Joe is such a dedicated worker! Look he is taking time out from his bachelor party to deploy this database schema change!”
LinkedIn is a job site. It is completely appropriate to announce you got a job. I want to know that people in my network have a job whether I have one or not. It means that I can reach out to them and ask if the company is still hiring.
> It's simply rude to continuously market things (anything) when there are people literally ... stressing themselves over the pressure of competition
> a person constantly marketing their looks is putting stress and pressure on many others
The way you put it nothing should ever happen.
Everything has pros and cons. There's no perfect solution to make everyone happy.
For example if I vote for 1 party, the other party loses votes so puts stress and pressure on them i.e. I shouldn't vote? Then they both lose out.
Or we should have monopolies everywhere because introducing competition puts stress and pressure on the existing player?
There's a reason these things aren't standard in resumés (at least for jobs that don't have a focus on appearance).
I feel like video will help mitigate this, as personalty and soft skills are communicated better that way. But if a company is going to discriminate based on a video, then they are going to discriminate when they interview you in person, no?
We're in such a connected age that anyone wanting to know your face can 99% of the time just google your name. That was an issue talked about even 20 years ago in my grade school days of Myspace.
Unless you legitmately have no photo of yourself on the internet (including LinkdIn), adding a photo here will not give or take much away from a malicious actor.
>There's a reason these things aren't standard in resumés
because companies are so scared of litigation that they won't even give feedback anymore. It's not a particularly good reason if we're being honest.
2. There's a variety of roles out there, and for many "executive presence" is important qualification.
(But really though,its because of tiktok)
Now - I'll 1000% agree, and speak from long years of work, that adhd and autism likely make it harder. But it's also quite hard for most people, just for different reasons, so I don't find it a filter with enough specificity.
(Perhaps I'm sliding onto the dark side of the force, I certainly wouldn't have thought so 20 years ago, but as I learn more about the massive scope and mandate of senior execs, and the time crunch they operate under, I am starting to understand a bit better than I used to, the value of speaking in orderly and well summarized fashion. Still struggle with it mind you, but do see there's more to it than just neurotypical filtering.)
Edit: It's about communication but also hype/motivation. Be it for the team, shareholders or customers.
And communication can be done in many ways. It doesn't have to be political speak, sometimes the directness some smart awkward people bring can be good and being awkward gives them the right to be direct without coming off as rude professionally.
More seriously though : Most big companies these days teach some variation of a 4 quadrant personality model such as DISC or equivalent. Scientific validity of these aside, today there's a fairly broad acceptance in North America that leaders come in different types, each with strengths and weaknesses.
I was personally shocked how many executives around me, with extreme client relationship management and people skills, are some kind of neurodevergent. One thing I've observed, and others may disagree,is that they can be much better teachers. A person who is "born leader" will struggle how to convey their skillset to others. A person who on the other hand had to themselves learn these skills the hard way, can much more easily decompose and relate them.
My wife has jokingly been called the most neurotypical person in the world :-). She's extremely emotionally intelligent. She intuitively does things which I had to learn on a very rational, conscious, intentional level. She's better at people skills than I am, but wouldn't even know where to begin to teach them, it's just too "obvious" for her to do or say the right thing.
Anyhoo, my answer to your question is "absolutely yes, but it'll take dedicated hard work " :-)
I think with Musk/zuckerberg/gates you are seeing a giradian duality. They simultaneously appear charismatic and awkward. It’s either extremely context sensitive or you are unable to accurately perceive it.
I also sort of feel like, people already hate cover letters. Now we’re trying to normalize audition videos? Maybe it’s me who’s out of touch?
That is hard to prescribe and those tech giants probably don't care much what it is as long as people are engaged.
In former days (until perhaps the end of the 90s) sending in a photo as part of an application was expected. But by now the customs have changed.
Photos may not be the final solution to this flood of automation, but it's being dabbled with.
You can already generate a profile picture and have it lip synced with a text to speech audio (or even speech to speech). It's a losing (lost?) fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK8sgB-58q0
Internet is rapidly becoming a pile of steaming shit already, captchas were annoying but now it seems the "are you a robot" test is coming everywhere, what a sad state of affairs. I wonder how much of the overall traffic is automated, 80%? 90% ?
The majority of people do not have a picture of them on the Internet.
https://bewerbung.com/lebenslauf-ohne-bewerbungsfoto/
> Eine Bewerbung ohne Foto zu verschicken, ist in den vergangenen Jahren zu einem regelrechten Trend geworden. Bei vielen Personalern genießen Lebensläufe ohne Bewerbungsfoto daher eine hohe Akzeptanz [...]
We shall not copy everything from America.
And the site goes on…
Trotzdem ist die Bewerbung ohne Foto nach wie vor eher die Ausnahme als die Regel. Denn ein sympathisches Bild erweckt einen guten ersten Eindruck. Somit wird Deine Bewerbung mit einer positiveren Grundeinstellung gesichtet, was zum Vorteil werden kann.
Richtig gestaltet, drückt das Bewerberbild außerdem Professionalität aus, lässt Deine Persönlichkeit erkennen und verdeutlicht, dass Du zur Unternehmenskultur passt. Grundlegende Informationen wie Dein Geschlecht oder Deine Herkunft lassen sich aus Deinem Lebenslauf ohnehin oft ableiten, beispielsweise aus Deinem Namen. Zudem finden die Personaler im Internet meist schnell ein Foto von Dir, wenn gewünscht.
Of course for every application a new one! </irony>
You should copy not needing photos on CVs. Doing so introduces an unacceptable risk of bias.
Most people I spoke with said if you show up with Europass it's considered a negative flag, but I suppose it may still be useful for some "less modern" jobs.
It's just a PDF in the end.
It encourages you to put a lot of things in it which are generally not interesting, much like in the old days you'd list the ability to drive a car in your CV, or having finished the mandatory military conscription.
People prefer a one pager with relevant experiences than a five pages which include your id number, birth date and address.
You can of course do a Europass CV with less info, it's just not how people do it generally, according to the people who complained about it (I'm just reporting what I heard, I don't care about the CV format)
It is surprising how culturally specific this is though - I've had CVs for hiring in our offshore centre in India where a candidate listed his father's details as a contact.
Even more of a culture shock was how much more open people are about their biases in those cases. "We can't have someone short doing job X, or they don't have a friendly face for Y, etc."
Don't they recommend having LinkedIn profile picture for better chances of getting shortlisted? Also assuming you are talking about physical resumes. Wouldn't having a photo attached to resume make more sense in terms of identifying the candidate correctly at any given stage of recruitment, before or after the in person interview?
Putting headshot in resumes is not expected and even cringe in my country, but some countries expect headshots and other highly personal info. No thanks.
For example, and I can only speak in anecdotes from my experience job searching in Greece, I had HR reps asking me my birth date, or when I'm gonna get married (I'm single).
So it's like, people who will discriminate on me exist, and I can only work on my real skills.
How am I supposed to distinguish the thousands, maybe millions of Johns and Janes without a picture to recognize them by?
OpenSpot isn’t meant to replace formal resumes entirely — it’s designed to help people stand out before that stage. It’s public, searchable, and curated — so if a recruiter finds someone interesting, they can reach out directly or request a formal resume.
Photos are optional, but yeah — they can help distinguish one Jane Doe from another, especially in a directory-style setting. Same goes for a short intro, project link, or anything else that brings some personality into the mix.
I'm from The Netherlands.
Photos are not required on OpenSpot - We included them because some people want to humanize their profile — but we’re also very aware of the bias/discrimination concerns, especially in the U.S.
The intent isn’t to mimic LinkedIn or create a polished image-centric profile like a dating app — it’s to offer optional ways for people to show who they are, beyond just a list of bullet points. For some, that’s a photo. For others, it’s a project demo or a short intro about their work.
That said, we’re actively listening and learning. If we find that photos do more harm than good — especially around bias or UX — we’re open to evolving that part of the product.
Thanks again for the thoughtful take — this kind of feedback makes the product better.
US HR used to throw away any photos that people attached to resumes. (Usually someone attaching a photo was a recent immigrant, who didn't know the US convention.)
I've even heard rumors that some companies/screeners had a policy of throwing away resumes that included photos or other gratuitous information that could be the basis for illegal/problematic discrimination.
"Because LinkedIn does it" isn't a good argument, because LinkedIn is pretty awful, and the only things going for it are: (1) the majority of people are on it, and (2) recruiters sometimes search/spam there.
Some social media sites do photos because they pander to the worst. Or, in the case of one prominent social media site, infamously because the original inspiration was to catalog the best-looking women at their college.
Unless you're a headshots site/app for hiring models/actors, best to go with content-of-their-character, and all that.