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Comment by justanother | Hacker News Reader

In the United States, literally nobody should be asking your age during a job interview.

In the UK (and I suspect all of the EU?) it’s specifically illegal to discriminate on age (https://www.gov.uk/employer-preventing-discrimination), and when I was last interviewing there HR would remove any birthdates that came in on CVs before passing them over to the interviewers.

Are the interviewers blindfolded too?

NO, but at least the older candidate can get their proverbial foot in the door before being screened out. Of course, the CV/resume is likely long enough to infer age within a decade or so. It's a hard problem to solve.

In Germany, it's customary to include a picture of yourself in your CV.

...I think you can figure out your chances, if you don't include one.

EDIT: I'm saying this to show how the German (who are European) employers will try to circumvent such age discriminating laws. You get it taught in school, in vocational training, at jobless centers, self-help books and the Internet, that the picture must be of "high-quality", in a sense already arguing past the necessity of why they'd even require one in the first place. I personally do not agree with this practice, though it seems, that more and more employees are becoming aware of this and employers are starting to respect that too.

For that exact reason I'm rejecting everybody that puts a picture on a CV in Germany.

Well that's just silly. If it's the norm, why penalise people who're just doing it the way they think everyone else will.

Better to specify in your job ad that you won't accept CV's with pics.

...I guess he's looking for people out-of-the-norm and willing/able to stand up to their convictions?

I wouldn't put a picture, but when I had to write some CVs here, I caved in and put a photo. I used to think it was a fault of mine to be so far off the norm, and I tried really hard to fit in. It just didn't work out for me. Today, I think I know that this is what can make me valuable.

EDIT: ...but it is kind of a play of statistics vs. faith, and I think that one shouldn't fault someone, if they can't pull the faith together for it. A comment on my parent comment tells about someone applying in the US with a comical picture. That person was able to afford applying in such a way, but when you really need a job, because money or family, would you really take that risk/leap of faith? EDIT2: ...or that could also be signalling, that someone is high-risk taker, which could also be an attribute an employer is looking for.

So... You throw 90% of CVs away because... you do?

Why is this comment being downvoted? Is it factually incorrect?

I wish it were. Google "lebenslauf muster" in image search to see it in full effect.

> There are a few must-have personal details every Lebenslauf should include which you might not have on your original CV: a photo, your marital status and place of birth.

https://www.thelocal.de/20130131/47649

This is the same in Sweden fwiw. I was agast when CVs started passing my desk with seemly random self-portraits on them.

Why the hell do I care what you look like?

True (about caring about looks); but now most people on linked in happily provide a photo of themselves, though admittedly I know many haven’t changed (updated) their photos since they uploaded a photogenic photo they’ve always used.

Well, at least in Sweden my photo-less CV hasn’t caused any problems. My lack of a LinkedIn account has attracted a couple of comments though.

Here in the US, we had a candidate include a picture of himself... wearing a captain hat and striking a dramatic pose. He said he put it there to filter out the wrong kind of companies. We hired him.

In Spain it's also common.

I don't have one on mine because I'm from the UK and it just feels weird.

Nowadays they can just look on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever anyway so it feels kind of pointless.

Fortunately, I've got lots of pictures from when I was much younger. ;-)

Here in the states, it's my understanding that the picture is for identifying your skin color, and is frowned upon for that reason.

It's illegal, but also hard to prove. Even without birth dates, you can make a reasonable estimate based on work experience and graduation date. And when the candidate turns out to be a bit grayer than you expected, that can, even subconsciously, affect your decision.

That's the law in a lot of countries, including here, but I've been asked it anyway. What are you going to do about it, beyond secretly recording your interviews then suing?

For the sake of your time and your sanity you should do neither of those things. You should file a complaint with the appropriate state labor body, particularly in a US state like CA where the agencies are well funded. The chance of it benefiting you is virtually nil, but the chance of it causing pain for the employer - hopefully forcing them to change their ways - is non-zero.

Outside the US I have no knowledge of at what level those protections may/may not be enforced (but hopefully somewhere).

I don't live in the US and age discrimination here certainly isn't uncommon. I didn't expect it to be so obvious, though.

They can ask what year you graduated from college which is a proxy for age.

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