8 ms·

Definitely beautiful and would love for something simple and clean to eat LinkedIn's lunch. I don't have much to add in addition to everyone else except this:

• etrautmann 6y ago
  This is really tough - humans are hardwired to form connections and remember people by recognizing faces. This, of course, is also exactly the problem, in that it allows for bias or prejudice of many different types to influence our judgements. I think I agree with you that the downsides and inherent unfairness of the genetic attractiveness lottery outweigh the upsides of attaching a name to a face. It's an empirical question then whether this works for users.
  • wsdrdsw 6y ago
    With real names, faces are just one google search away for most people (and we could debate further what would it mean if a face wasn't found). Functionally the website would be a wasteland of white sameness without portraits, no way around that I think. I'm not entirely convinced this service solves the linkedin pitfall of mingling jumphoppers racking up impressive paper stats and polluting the signal.
    • fakedang 6y ago
      > With real names, faces are just one google search away for most people (and we could debate further what would it mean if a face wasn't found). But it becomes an added hassle for those people, thus making it UX hostile for stalkers. Who is actually going to Google each and every other name on somebody else's collaborator list? Some determined stalkers I guess, but they are not going to be deterred anyways. On the point of faces not being found, as a counterexample, some of my former MDs did not put pics in their LinkedIn. Yet people in the industry knew them by name, even if they weren't rockstar investors or something. Having heard someone's name from other sources such as word of mouth or from newspaper articles is a much better signal than using names to recognize them.
    • vmception 6y ago
      what did I just read mask the photo and the name. use regional locale detection and user choice to make fake names for everyone, use GAN to create fake profile pictures.
      • kybernetikos 6y ago
        > regional locale detection and user choice to make fake names Presumably you're talking about locale detection of the hiring company/reviewer rather than locale detection of the CV submitter. I really like the idea, although practically it's probably not a good one in small companies where people are likely to actually work with the person whose CV they're reviewing. I would say stick to placeholders that are obviously placeholders in order to avoid confusion. And obviously there are some people who do need to see the real names, so give them a clear deanonymise step.
    • benedikt 6y ago
      You can’t really stop people from finding your face online if it’s on social media, but you can present the information so that you’d first read the text and then see a photo. Move the photo on the profile to the bottom of it, and make it optional.
      • ryandrake 6y ago
        > With real names, faces are just one google search away for most people > You can’t really stop people from finding your face online if it’s on social media Hey, some of us worked pretty hard for this to not be true, so at the very least the photo should be optional. I’m blessed with a common first and last name and outside of my HN username I am pretty un-Googlable. Someone very motivated could probably find an old photo of me or two but it’s not universally true that everyone’s photo is a simple search away.
        • efreak 6y ago
          Others aren't exactly common, but I spent a good bit of time a while back removing my own information from the public internet. It's not easy removing yourself from all the Spokeo clones, but most of them have some way to do so, or at least remove the information from the public.
      • win_ini 6y ago
        I agree - like only show a persons face AFTER you’ve connected somehow (I agree we’re hardwired to recognize faces - but I don’t want to try to recognize all the people as I’m browsing etc. - but when they become part of my Rolodex, then I wanna recognize their faces)
    • SmellTheGlove 6y ago
      > mingling jumphoppers racking up impressive paper stats What does this mean?
      • asyncscrum 6y ago
        Social media obsessed people who are great at clicking buttons and getting followers but add no value to the network. They only fill up a feed with noise.
    • vbtemp 6y ago
      Wasteland of white sameness? That's a funny way of saying simple and uncluttered.
    • kybernetikos 6y ago
      > With real names Most people reviewing CVs don't need to see the real names. It'd be great to have a CV service that could render the CV either with or with out them. Also, maybe I'm the only one, but I'm starting to experience a bit of 'mindfulness' fatigue. Seems like it's mindlessly being added to everything regardless of whether it makes any sense or not, so I dislike 'Mindful professional profiles' as a subhead.
• nchelluri 6y ago
  I agree with what you've said. I like the site and I think it's very nice, but I dislike headshots. https://twostepsforward.co/2015/10/on-web-authorship-trends/ https://twostepsforward.co/2015/10/on-web-authorship-trends/
• drusepth 6y ago
  They're definitely overused in a lot of designs. They can be useful to portray some information at a glance in some data-heavy designs, but I don't find them helpful here -- I find them distracting. Comparison CV with/without faces: https://i.imgur.com/u6FVLqr.png https://i.imgur.com/u6FVLqr.png
  • bosie 6y ago
    i don't even get what the faces should indicate? former coworkers? people that the person was managing?
    • drusepth 6y ago
      The best intent I can think of is showing 1) team sizes, and/or 2) potentially-recognizable faces that a recruiter might interpret as "oh, s/he worked with someone I know is good at X". But both are likely wishful thinking: I'm sure it's just a list of faces of other users who've put that company/product on their own CV on that particular site, which 1) is an incomplete and unverified potential-subset of people (and therefore not a good representation of team sizes), and 2) hugely unlikely for it to ever be relevant to a recruiter (because how likely is it for your audience to recognize effectively-random faces?). But yeah, could just as well be people they managed, or people from that company, or people who endorsed them for their specific work in that role, etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • eps 6y ago
    Distracting for sure. It's also useless to the vast majority of readers, but since it is useful to some, a better option would be to have "X connections" (or "X colleagues") note that expands into a list on click. Color it gray, right-align and you now have a secondary info for those who need it, but out of the way for those who don't.
    • etripe 6y ago
      One could even go with a series of dots (or other visualisation), preferably in a neutral colour, that can be expanded to include faces, so you still get some visual indication of team/network size. As is, it definitely just is visual clutter.
• germinalphrase 6y ago
  I absolutely agree that faces should not be an available option.
• smt88 6y ago
  LinkedIn is unusable without faces. It's often the only way to know that you found the person you were searching for. Perhaps this site doesn't need that functionality though.
  • sethammons 6y ago
    maybe you see portraits of connections, but something else for those who've yet to connect. Or maybe portraits if it appears that you likely know the person? Similarly, maybe you can search by name or know the names of those you are connected to, but, by default, you don't get a pic or a name. Hmmmm.
    • jfim 6y ago
      The picture still helps to disambiguate which of the three John Smiths that went to University of Foobar was the one that you met at the mixer yesterday.
  • kelnos 6y ago
    If you look at it as a tool for recruiters, you won't be searching for specific people. You'll be searching for attributes/skills you're looking for, and then get a list. If you're an individual applying for a job, you'd link to your profile, so the recruiter who receives your application won't need to search. If you're connecting with someone you know personally, then you should already have enough information at hand in order to know you have the right person based on their listed work experience. The only time you might search is when you're doing professional networking and only have a name. But you usually have some other piece of info, like the company they work for, and possibly their broad job function or title. 99% of the time that should be enough to disambiguate people with the same name. And if all you have is a name, maybe you haven't really "networked" with them enough to warrant a connection?
    • treis 6y ago
      >If you're connecting with someone you know personally, then you should already have enough information at hand in order to know you have the right person based on their listed work experience. But the point isn't to connect to those people. They're a phone call/e-mail away. It's to connect with and maintain the connection to the randos that you briefly meet.
• random5634 6y ago
  Not a linkedin fan and I like the idea of focusing on what people use / want and not on what they don't. That said, I suspect you underestimate the importance of pictures in terms of memory building and many other networking steps.
  • grogenaut 6y ago
    yet unless you were an actor resumes didn't have pictures attached for well forever.
    • acct776 6y ago
      But you handed them in, in person, and had an in person interview. If anything, a picture is a loss of historically available visual data on a hire.
      • vonmoltke 6y ago
        > But you handed them in, in person I have done that exactly once, at a college recruiting event in 2002, and the person who took it and gave me the pre-screen interview never saw me again until after I was hired. > and had an in person interview Are you under the impression this has gone away?
        • acct776 6y ago
          For the privileged of this board, yes. Tech jobs are all remote, all the time now.
      • grogenaut 6y ago
        You would mail in your CV, and the HM wouldn't be the one receiving them if you did hand them in.
    • random5634 6y ago
      I actually always made the name part big if I could - not to remember it but for the visual sort of like a face. Note: I've also seen that for minority / female hiring, a face can really jump your resume up as it makes clear you may help add some diversity to a team.
• wryoak 6y ago
  Speaking as someone who profits tremendously from the halo effect: I'm pro-face, but I remain anti-circle. Can we consider heptagons? They're like a less bellicose pentagon.
• notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  I really like the idea of the faces IF you select them to be in your bio and they are like verified to have been your teammates or something. It's a nice easy way of having references built into your resume
• gdsdfe 6y ago
  It's actually the norm in some parts of the world to have pictures on resumes
  • MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    True, but I think there's a strong case to be made that it shouldn't be. It (further) opens the door to subtle biases on the grounds of ethnicity, age, and attractiveness, and has no obvious upside.
    • gdsdfe 6y ago
      I do agree with you, I'm part of a visible minority, but some may argue that if the company have already a toxic environment I'd rather be off. This is especially true for small companies that media don't care about.
  • chrisseaton 6y ago
    What do they use the picture for when they get them?
    • gdsdfe 6y ago
      I don't know maybe someone from europe can answer ... I was just point it out that north america is not the world.
• fedd 6y ago
  but what if my face is quite pretty and I want to share its outlook in some circle?
  • dylan604 6y ago
    Might I suggest something more appropriate where other users are looking for it like Insta/FB/etc. Maybe if you're so special, try looking for an agent and get on a billboard on the side of the highway so that I can show you my improvemnts with a can of spray paint
    • fedd 6y ago
      I'm translating this as "don't you dare to joke with me"
      • dylan604 6y ago
        You'd be incorrect in that translation.
• benedikt 6y ago
  What if the photo is optional and displayed at the bottom? Showing a practically mandated photo first puts a lot of unconscious biases in your head. This is a relatively new trend, and probably has something with social media to do.
  • vbtemp 6y ago
    Yeah faces-in-circles is another one of many design tropes and fads that will soon be so dated, or look like lame Facebook knock off
• Shoue 6y ago
  Around ten direct replies to your post and I still don't feel like the reason why pictures on CVs is a bad idea has been explained explicitly. I'm in the UK, where race, age, gender, religion, disability are among protected characteristics. As such, that information, should it be included, is often either stripped from the CV automatically or the CV discarded entirely to obviate the risk of being accused of discrimination.
  • imbnwa 6y ago
    I mean no one's made an argument why it shouldn't be _optional_ if it already isn't either, as well as people are confusing the context of HR/Hiring Manager's shifting through resumes and traversing their own social graph on LinkedIn whether by search or connections list. This site could even, when it gets up to supporting some social graph, separate the two views, HR is using bookmarks/folder organization/some other means of solving that problem anyway so "photos key to memory" is irrelevant
    • webmaven 6y ago
      > I mean no one's made an argument why it shouldn't be _optional_ if it already isn't either, I'll give you an argument against optional headshots: Adverse selection. Given the advantages and disadvantage of having a headshot, most of the folks omitting them will have good reason to do so. Which means that those who don't have a headshot will be disadvantaged further. IOW, not having a headshot signals one of three things: "I care about my privacy more than most people", "I couldn't be bothered to include a headshot", or "I am a member of a group that experiences prejudice based on superficial characteristics, such as weight or race, and wish to avoid this". There is a long tail of possible reasons and variations on these, for example the privacy one could actually be more along the lines of "I am hiding from my violent ex", but you get the drift. None of these possible reasons are ones that give a reader warm fuzzy feelings. If the profile owner is very lucky, the reader will treat the absence of a headshot as largely irrelevant metadata, but that's the best case scenario: one of merely avoiding negative associations. There is no actual upside (the one exception I can come up with is an employer actually looking for candidates who are fanatical about their privacy for some reason, perhaps for security-related positions). At least when you include a headshot you are only going to get hit with the actual relevant prejudice (which is a social filter that can be useful to you), rather than a stew of prejudices attached to all the imagined or assumed reasons for the image's absence, none of them consciously or coherently articulated.
• subpixel 6y ago
  I agree about the faces but I’ll go further - even if it were a list of names, it’s a distraction. My professional profile is about me. I can mention partners and collaborators in my position/project descriptions. You can drill down to find out who my colleagues are. But nobody has ever wished LinkedIn had a MySpace-style top eight.
• hcurtiss 6y ago
  All else being equal, isn't attractiveness also a marketable asset in most if not all industries?
  • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    How does being pretty make me a better, or even more marketable programmer or sysadmin? I'm not user-facing, and interaction is mostly done by textual messages.
    • hcurtiss 6y ago
      It may not. But where it is a marketable asset, is it somehow wrong to trade on that fact?
• ehwhyreally 6y ago
  all the people standing up for faces are attractive, i myself like my face on a resume only because ive seen in the past how managers sort resumes, most of the time the face pics go to the top.
• yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm a fan of anyting to replace LinkedIn, but if your site requires a picture that I'm not going to sign up. I don't particularly mind if you make it available for people who want to do that, but it's a hard pass for me.
  • TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    This site does not require a picture. I tried it.
• tanujraghav 6y ago
  Hi, In the view of replies posted, I think profile pics (hereafter avatars) in colleague section are fine to have but dIefinitely not a necessity. IMHO, here is an optimal solution: Couldn't there be a two way option: whether i want to share my avatar in the circle, and if i want to look at other avatars? It would be pretty effective.Lets say, I'm not interested in avatar of your colleagues, so i can turn them off or they would be in a drop down list. And say if I don't want you to see my avatar in colleagues section/list, I can turn it off from my side. So, you would only see a default avatar associated with my profile.
  • vbtemp 6y ago
    I'm of relatively strong opinion.. but why just not have faces-in-circles anywhere? It would feel so liberating from all the social network gimmicks out there. To me it would then feel so real and down for business, rather than have a whole status/appearance signaling sub game.
• martamorena284 6y ago
  Without forced connections, how do you prevent people from tagging others in their profile without permission?
• mattlutze 6y ago
  You found the hot-button topic... If it was just a CV repository, I would be quite comfortable with this approach. Some regions have a social mandate to include photos on CVs and it bothers me quite a bit. Where I live Marital status / number of children is also common which I really don't understand. Because this is set up as a web of professional landing pages though, part of the system is discovering people that you may know or finding people that you're looking for (and not just getting a link from someone to their CV). I'd love an option to turn it off site-wide though, that could be a nice feature if you prefer to more-dissociate your connections from their physical selves.
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I’m not sure how this plays out, but I know of one company that has an HR policy, stating that résumés that come in with photos or images of the applicants are to be immediately rejected. I was told it was because they want to avoid bias charges.
  • Jestar342 6y ago
    Discard just the photo or the résumé entirely? If the latter - do they acknowledge the irony?
    • ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      The latter. And what is this "irony" of which you speak?
      • Jestar342 6y ago
        The irony of attempting to avoid bias, by using "has photo" bias.
        • ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
          NM. It was a joke. Yeah, it is whacky, but most HR departments are run by lawyers, these days, and lawyers have a strange set of rules.
          • Jestar342 6y ago
            Damn, I figured it could have been. :)
• iwangulenko 6y ago
  European tech recruiter here (again). If I want to discriminate against you, I will anyway do so latest during the onsite. I often have to skim through 200 CVs in a day and do >10 calls. I find it very convenient to have a face attached to the CV, because it helps me remember the person. People hire people and people have faces. I understand why people feel it is a burden to make and put a photo on the CV but I see so much updside also for candidates that I always recommend to add a photo. Here in Europe it's not forbidden but actually common. If you don't do it, you're the weirdo and your profile might get forgotten/ignored. Why risk this? I made a video to explain this once and not have to tell this to people again and again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELX85HAhHew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELX85HAhHew
  • enriquto 6y ago
    > If I want to discriminate against you, I will anyway do so latest during the onsite. It is different. Many people want to maintain their image out of the public internet. I would never use a service that forces me to show my face to the public (not that there's anything wrong with my face, I just want it that way).
    • iwangulenko 6y ago
      Usually, the firms require a PDF CV, so it is a private document shared between you and them, and it gets deleted after some weeks.
• VoodooJuJu 6y ago
  We should do away with names on applications as well. Names can tell me about the gender and often the ethnicity of the applicant, which are both also ripe for discriminating against. With an online application, we can just replace the applicant's name with an ID number and associate the two in some database that the employer doesn't see until the applicant is hired. Actually, now with remote work, even after the applicant is hired, we still never have to see or hear them at all! We can just keep referring to them as Employee #1672378623, use a randomly-generated avatar for our Zoom meetings, and filter everyone's voice through voice-changer software. Bias-be-gone!
  • pestaa 6y ago
    Sounds like how Illuminati meetings are depicted. You won't hear objections from me.
    • checkyoursudo 6y ago
      Yes, this is how we run them ... erm, I mean, what?
  • thehoomanist 6y ago
    Would that be the same number you tattooed on their arms, or is this too humanizing for this approach?
  • sojournerc 6y ago
    > "never have to see or hear them at all!" Not sure if you're joking, but IMO this is throwing out the baby with the bath water. I like the idea of hiding details from the hiring filter and selection process that may contribute to bias, but never seeing or hearing the people I'm working with!? Sounds truly terrible. Also, unless your voice changer actually selects/changes the words/pronunciation of the speaker, it will still be easy to identify details about them. Accent, word-choice (soda vs pop), urban fast-talk, rural drawl all can be picked up even with a distorted voice.
  • ramblerman 6y ago
    I couldn’t initially tell if your second paragraph was meant sarcastically or not. I also want to do away with discrimination. But people’s faces and voices express emotion, character, and warmth Your utopia sounds absolutely horrible. I met my wife at work, she is a different ethnicity and culture than me.
• libeclipse 6y ago
  I just put an avatar that's not my face.