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When I was in England for a short time I was tasked with screening candidates for employment (software engineers). As an American, I was taken aback by most of

• andmikey 5y ago
  Not sure how long ago this was - photos on resumes is definitely not a thing in the UK anymore. Very common in some European countries (e.g. Germany), though.
  • michaelt 5y ago
    Some jobs in the UK get a lot of international applicants; from time to time they'll include photos. Agree it's pretty uncommon though.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • projektfu 5y ago
    Honestly, 20 years ago. And we were seeing a lot of non-English applicants in central London, no surprise there.
    • hnlmorg 5y ago
      Those are some massive caveats that really should have been included in your original post
• edent 5y ago
  That is extremely unusual for the UK. I know some European countries make a photo mandatory - but I've never seen it in the UK. I've reviewed a huge number of CVs - at SME and large companies. I think the only time I've ever seen a photo in that context was an auto-generated thing from LinkedIn.
  • mcv 5y ago
    As far as I know, it's very unusual in Netherland. I've certainly never included a photo on a CV (though I do have one on LinkedIn, where a lot of my work comes from). When I was part of the hiring process, I did notice that all Indian/TCS CVs I got to see had photos, though.
    • prawn 5y ago
      I've had a few Dutch interns join me in Australia. One applicant who wasn't successful was a young woman whose CV included a few personal photos, one of which was a bit of a sultry pose straddling a chair. Not indecent, but certainly not work oriented.
      • wink 5y ago
        I once got a cv from a developer who put an url to his homepage where he had photos of him and his girlfriend modeling underwear. Not a real problem (for me), but it's the first time I've seen someone nearly naked before I met them in person for an interview. It was certainly a little odd.
        • jvvw 5y ago
          When trying to find a graphic designer once, got a portfolio from one designer mostly comprised of work for a soft porn site. It may have been professional graphic design experience but not exactly something I wanted to look at as part of my job.
  • Ntrails 5y ago
    Eh, I see a few photos on CVs here in the UK - typically on Euro candidates though (from memory). On the other hand I've seen all sorts of weird shit on CVs, it is part of the fun. From the guy giving himself 5/5 stars for inter-personal skills, to the obscure hobbies expanded on in great detail, to the hilarious email addresses. There is just a wide range of views on what a cv should contain. My views doubtless differ to others! I did give a yes to the guy with the .txt file cv though. On principle.
• filoleg 5y ago
  Heard from friends who lived and worked in South Korea that it was pretty much mandatory for any resume application there. The specific one that comes to mind is nursing. Definitely left me baffled the first time I heard it.
  • viceroyalbean 5y ago
    Yep, pretty much mandatory in Korea. Everyone goes to professional photographers who apply copious amounts of photoshop, of course. You even get to pick your own image for your driver's license, again with a healthy serving of digital retouching.
    • deleted 5y ago
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• version_five 5y ago
  I worked in business consulting and we always put resumes/bios with out pictures (professional headshots) in proposals. Many startups have founder / leadership pics and bios on their website Most "professionals" like lawyers have a headshot on their website. Every political campaign features the face of the candidates. Almost everyone who uses linkedin has a pic Really, western institutional job applications are pretty much the only place where people are trying to "sell themselves" but don't have a pic. It's basically fairness theatre, to pretend that the personal physical characteristics of people don't matter. If that was true, you wouldn't have all the examples I listed. I'm not trying to say it's right or wrong here, just that it's obvious from all human behavior that seeing what a person looks like is an important part of working with them.
  • filoleg 5y ago
    > I'm not trying to say it's right or wrong here, just that it's obvious from all human behavior that seeing what a person looks like is an important part of working with them. You will see it during the actual interview stage (whether it is done through a videocall or in-person), why would you need it during the resume stage? So you can use a single photo of theirs as a factor when deciding whether to filter out a resume or to proceed further?
  • projektfu 5y ago
    I agree it factors in highly in the US. Probably incorrectly so. But here the perceived threat of lawsuits and equal employment opportunity scrutiny drive the practice of leaving out the headshot. Let people discriminate when they have more plausible deniability, I suppose. Even though unattractive is not a protected class, receiving headshots of the applicants to be rejected before interview would open you to scrutiny of differentials in hiring of protected classes as well.
  • symlinkk 5y ago
    > seeing what a person looks like is an important part of working with them Why?
    • version_five 5y ago
• hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  As others have pointed out, even without photos on resumes, often times the first thing I do when looking at a candidate is go to their LinkedIn profile, which of course do feature headshots.
  • irrational 5y ago
    Will you not hire them if they don’t have a LinkedIn profile (or any other social media accounts)?
    • userbinator 5y ago
      I suspect that employers who are more secretive themselves may find the lack of social media or other nonymous online presence as a good indication that the person in question is unlikely to be someone who could publicly share internal information accidentally.
    • PeterisP 5y ago
      Depending on the job market, in situations where there are many good candidates for each position companies generally are satisficing not optimizing, and in that case simply discarding some percentage of candidates (i.e. anyone unusual) is not a drawback (since the difference between the best candidate and the next few runners-up is less than what you can measure) and so arbitrary filtering gets done. Of course, that would usually not be an obstacle in job markets where acceptable candidates are scarce; SWE vacancies are not the same as journalist vacancies.
  • __turbobrew__ 5y ago
    This is why I removed my headshot from linkedin.
• dzhiurgis 5y ago
  With or without, tons of companies will do "due diligence" and will look for your FB and Insta feeds, just in case you are drunk or drugged or whatever might seem inappropriate. Kinda creepy to go such lengths, but also some companies don't want people not smart enough to not post their shenanigans publicly.
  • irrational 5y ago
    Will they not hire you if you don’t have social media accounts? I could see them thinking that you are lying and trying to hide something.
    • Spooky23 5y ago
      Usually information can be used against you, but the absence does not.
      • dzhiurgis 5y ago
        IMO would suspicious for high enough positions where marketing starts to become part of the job
        • Spooky23 5y ago
          Great point!
  • Rexxar 5y ago
    How do they ensure they are not looking at someone else with the same name ? Not hiring you because you are drunk on Facebook is one thing but not hiring you because someone with the same name is drunk on Facebook is completely ridiculous.
    • dzhiurgis 5y ago
      Happens towards the last interviews, after which they already saw you irl/zoom. Interesting problem btw when picking up names for kids - unique or john smith to blend in. Something Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt pondered a decade ago.
• hnlmorg 5y ago
  I’ve been a hiring manager in England for around 10 years and I can’t recall a single CV with a photo. I don’t know where these CVs were coming from that you received but it’s definitely not standard practice to send a CV with a photo here.
  • bencollier49 5y ago
    I wonder if they were working with recruiters who were scraping LinkedIn photos. Very unusual practice for the UK, and slightly dubious, IMO.
• nostromo 5y ago
  There's a lot of data out there showing that attractiveness, fitness (as in, not obese), and tallness are all massive biases in the workplace -- much bigger in many studies than biases around gender and ethnicity even. I don't know why these forms of identity are almost entirely ignored, while we obsess over others. Imagine if tech companies published the height, weight, and facial symmetry of their workforces, like they do now with race and gender.
  • et-al 5y ago
    Being unattractive is not a protected group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group
    • albntomat0 5y ago
      Just because something isn't a legally protect group, doesn't mean discriminating against that group is acceptable.
      • leereeves 5y ago
        This is why I dislike the idea of protected groups. Some people do seem to think that the existence of protected groups means it's ok to discriminate against anyone who isn't protected. But law is only about power. It has little relation to morality.
        • dragonwriter 5y ago
          > This is why I dislike the idea of protected groups. Some people do seem to think that the existence of protected groups means it's ok to discriminate against anyone who isn't protected. In law, for private parties, that is expressly the case. Absent protected classes people could, and with them they still can outside of them, differentiate treatment on any basis they choose. For government action under US Constitutional law, it's expressly not the case, but discrimination on other bases has a lower threshold for Constitutional acceptability (rational basis vs. strict/intermediate scrutiny.) (Essentially every non-random decision affecting treatment of people discriminates on some basis.)
• alimov 5y ago
  That’s an interesting practice… I’m glad this is not the case in the states, aside from maybe applying for acting roles. I don’t know if it’s common practice nowadays but I remember there was a period of time when employers would request your social media profiles.. did they encourage something similar in England? Im asking because if they already encouraged photo submissions, this seems like a related piece of information they might have also liked to receive. To be honest I don’t know why they would want an SWE candidates photo in the first place, it’s not a PR heavy role… maybe they want to use A.I to measure a level of greasiness or the size of a candidates head (kidding!)
  • Lio 5y ago
    I'm not sure what the parent is talking about but this is not something we do in England for SWE roles.
• onion2k 5y ago
  I've worked in tech in the UK for 25 years now, in companies ranging from tiny startups to SMEs to large corporations, and I've reviewed probably a few thousand CVs in that time. I can't remember ever seeing one with a photo on it. I suspect your experience was influenced by something other than location.
• philliphaydon 5y ago
  In NZ/AU we don’t include photos or personal information. When I moved to Singapore I was stocked. People put photos. Birthday. Family. Current Salary. Address. Long cover letters.
• langitbiru 5y ago
  It's one thing that attractive people fare better in workplaces. But they also fare better in the courtroom: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/so-sue-me/201408/do-attractive-people-fare-better-in-the-courtroom https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/so-sue-me/201408/do-...
• jasfi 5y ago
  What about face-to-face or Zoom interviews? At some point you're going have to show your face. LinkedIn has also changed things a lot. It seems like a losing battle, in spite of the good intentions.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• shoshino 5y ago
  > When I was in England .. I was taken aback by most of the resumes including photos. That's just not done here in the US... This does not match my experience in London working for SMEs, it's very rare that a CV includes a photo, especially tech role applicants.
• rejectfinite 5y ago
  Not here in Sweden. Don't equate London/UK to Europe. Typical American.
  • vinay427 5y ago
    To be fair, they at least said “seems to be,” which is a bit better than many Europeans who say similar things about Europe on this site, which I find even less excusable and seem to see daily. On topic, it is quite common in a few other European countries, such as Switzerland and I believe Germany, so I imagine it’s at least much more common in Europe overall given that it’s relatively unheard of in the US.
• comprev 5y ago
  It’s not a UK cultural thing - never in my life or any friends who I asked have attached a photo - but it’s often done by applicants who might be UK residents when it’s considered the norm in their country of origin. Personally I hate it, as I know subconsciously having seen their photo, I _will_ use it as part of my evaluation which is unfair to other candidates.
  • mejutoco 5y ago
    What you describe is what I would consider a cultural thing. Here in Germany everybody attaches a photo (often a business-like studio photo), for instance.
  • serenitylater 5y ago
• omnicognate 5y ago
  I've been working as a programmer in the UK for ~20 years. I've interviewed a huge number of job candidates in that time and reviewed more CVs than I'd care to count. I have never seen a single CV with a photo on it. Entirely possible they're filtered out by recruiters and/or HR, of course.
• turing_complete 5y ago
  I am living in a country where photos on a resume are the norm and for me it is the other way round. I am interviewing a lot of people at the moment and having a picture with the resume really helps thinking of the applicant as a human being, rather than just a character sheet with skills and abilities. It also helps to remember and associate resumes, it's easier to relate a portrait to a set of skills and a CV than tens of names. You don't have to be a super model, just any professional picture will do that. It's also an illusion that not having pictures on the resume will reduce Bias in favor of attractive people. It will only push it to a later stage of the interview process.
  • seunosewa 5y ago
    I think most less attractive people would rather get to the later stages of the interview process where they'll get a chance to advocate for themselves. It's better than being screened out early and not knowing whether it's because you're ugly or because the qualifications listed in your resume aren't impressive.
  • JCharante 5y ago
    In a merit based process shouldn't applicants be thought of as just character sheets?
    • eru 5y ago
      Depends. Someone will have to work with those people. They don't just interact with a computer or a machine.
      • paulryanrogers 5y ago
        Right but is their name or physical appearance really that important in working together? I've worked with people I never met, never saw their photo or real name or heard their voice. As long as they communicate somehow and produce work needed, isn't that enough?
    • dustymcp 5y ago
• Lio 5y ago
  I'm surprised by this comment. It's definitely not standard practice to include a photo with a CV in the UK to my knowledge. Anecdotally I've never done that at any point in my career nor have I ever been asked to. I've also never seen a photo included with a CV when hiring.
• arethuza 5y ago
  "It seems to be standard practice in Europe" I'm in my 50s in the UK and I've never had anyone ask for a photo during recruitment and I've also done a lot of hiring for multiple companies and they certainly didn't ask for photos.
• arccy 5y ago
  with linkedin being so common these days, does it really matter if the photo is on the actual resume?
• mcntsh 5y ago
  In the US, you're asked your ethnicity, gender, and sexuality on every job application. Just saying.
  • jpindar 5y ago
    And they almost always say that that information is optional and will not afffect the hiring process.
    • autoexec 5y ago
      of course if that were true they wouldn't be asking, just like how they don't ask about what brand of dish soap I use or how I feel about aardvarks or anything else that actually doesn't matter to them. I wish they'd just be honest about it.