Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0xfaded | Hacker News Reader

As a technical person who hires people occasionally, the one guaranteed thing that will make me read a resume is LaTeX. I dislike profile pictures because it causes me to have unavoidable bias.

Just a data point

View on HN

As someone who has applied for a lot of jobs in the past year and loves TeX, it's a bad idea for applicants. Greenhouse consistently pulls data incorrectly from resumes made in TeX and this puts you at a huge disadvantage within a pool of applicants. My response rate went up massively as soon as I abandoned my well-crafted TeX resume and went to a bare-bones resume made in Apple Pages.

I never knew about this...is this true for resumes converted to pdf from latex? Is there a way I can check my resume to see if it is getting parsed correctly?

I'd say it's true for any nonstandard pdf form resume; I don't use latex to make mine but I've yet to find an application tool that actually pulled my information correctly. I keep a plain text version which I use for the upload portion then when I get to the attachments portion (typically trying to get a cover letter out of me) I remove the plain one and add my nice pdf version. Saves tons of headaches dealing with the various application software. If I think they'll be doing the processing after app submission, I'll send both versions. I've even had hiring managers flat out ask for plain text resumes too.

This validates my LaTeX usage, but honestly, can’t you only detect it if I’m using Computer Modern? I am, precisely because of people like you, but I don’t think you could tell a XeTeX-built resume with a Unicode font from one done in Word. And conversely a Word user could simply download CM Unicode and reap the LaTeX bonus points, no? :)

I include \latex in my resume under "skills" for this reason. But I agree, it's hard to tell.

Sometimes not even an commonly talked about bias like race or gender. It can be as simple as "this person looks annoying".

Isn't it even illegal to have pictures in some countries, precisely to avoid such biases?

> it causes me to have unavoidable bias.

Admitting you're susceptible to bias is one thing (we all are, I think). Calling it unavoidable makes it seem like something innate and implies you lack free will. I'm curious why you see it as unavoidable.

It's honestly very self-aware to accept that there are some biases that are very hard to control, or even realize you're being influenced by, and so try to avoid being influenced at all be putting barriers between you and them, like preferring no photos.

I think it's fairly self-deluding to simply think you can choose not to let an unconscious bias influence you.

Extremely self-deluding.

Because once you accept you are susceptible to a bias, and you know that a person fits that bias, -what do you do-? You can ask "if this person was (not this bias) what would I do", but -can you be sure-? Do you have an exactly equivalent data point to compare against? Of course not; everyone is a bit unique. Can you be certain, if you pass on the person, it was due solely to the heuristics you've built up around resume and etc, and not you reinterpreting them through your bias? Can you be certain, if you hire a person, it was solely due to the heuristics you've built up around resume and etc, and not you overcompensating to try and account for your bias?

It's going to influence you. It -may- not change the outcome, but if you aren't concerned about that, no matter what steps you take, then you're deluding yourself.

Its more sad to watch your display of learned helplessness.

Our biases are inherent from millions of years of evolution that gave us the ability to look at another person and instantly form a perception "this person is of my tribe" or "this person is an outsider."

It must have had a valuable survival benefit when we were hunter-gatherers but probably not so much today.

It’s quite likely that we do, in fact, lack free will.

To be honest, not even sure how free will would work in theory.

It doesn't need to be complicated. I don't have free will, but good luck deciding what the meat inside my skull does in response to a given set of inputs, so it doesn't matter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com