Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters
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Of course, attractiveness factors in highly once you get your foot in the door, even if people try to act like it doesn't. Even straight male engineers seem to think more highly of attractive male engineers, just because of the "coolness" factor they may bring. There's really just not a lot of information gleaned from an interview beyond whether the person has the basic minimum knowledge for the field they are in, and these soft things take an outsize portion of the score.
Things may be changing or may be different in big orgs, I don't know. I was only familiar with SME hiring.
Agree it's pretty uncommon though.
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.
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.
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.
Power to you for living a healthy lifestyle but... you were big on chugging kegs before you were born?!
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.
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?
Why?
You even get to pick your own image for your driver's license, again with a healthy serving of digital retouching.
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.
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.
Very unusual practice for the UK, and slightly dubious, IMO.
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.
But law is only about power. It has little relation to morality.
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.)
I must say, I'm surprised to see you defending prejudice. From what I've read of your posts here over the years, I thought you were against such things.
Kind of an odd example to use to defend that “protected classes make people think other discrimination is acceptable” argument, since protected classes didn't exist then and people thought that discrimination was perfectly acceptable.
> I must say, I'm surprised to see you defending prejudice.
I must say, I’m surprised you think I am defending prejudice.
You are literally arguing in favor of the idea that "it's ok to discriminate against anyone who isn't protected".
Prejudice is still prejudice even if the particular characteristic on which that prejudice is based isn't protected (yet...).
> Kind of an odd example to use to defend ...
I'm not using that example to defend my statement, I'm using it to discredit the idea that the law can be used as a basis or guide for morality.
Edit to add: Feel free to have the last word. I can't respond at the moment because I'm "posting too fast", even though I'm posting less often than some others here...
I will say simply that the point is to oppose discrimination against a marginalized group. I don't understand your confusion about that.
I'm curious about your proposal for curbing discrimination.
No, I’m literally not.
In fact, I’m pointing out that even in law (in the US Constitutional system) it is expressly not unconditionally the case for government, as all government discrimination must pass the rational basis test.
For private parties, discrimination is presumptively legal (aside from protected classes applicable to certain private activities), because (at least, this is one way of looking at it) there is no limited set of “proper purposes” private individuals may pursue, therefore the private equivalent of the rational basis test would be a nullity. It can’t all be improper, because pretty much all substantive decision-making involves some form of discrimination. Choosing to buy Coke vs. Pepsi is private discrimination on some basis. As to when particular legal private discrimination is proper, people will have all sorts of opinions. When there is sufficient consensus that a particular kind of discrimination is sufficiently bad in a particular domain to warrant public intervention (ideally, in democratic principal, though of course real government doesn’t necessarily quite follow the ideal), it will become a protected class.
Is “lookism”, but for when attractiveness is a bona fide job qualification, something that should be treated as a basis protected against discrimination in hiring? Maybe, maybe not.
Should we go farther, and establish that in private industry, as is the case in much government employment, we go beyond the concept of protected classes (without also protecting those) and create a legal requirement that hiring and promotion, etc., is done strictly on bases grounded in documented job requirements and duties, with a legal right to challenge and overturn any such decision for failing that even if no protected class discrimination is involved?
Or, perhaps, falling short of a legal mandate, should we expect private employers to adopt that as their own rule, with a private (but suitably independent of management) appeal forum?
Or is the point just to grouse about “discrimination”?
Alan Turing was chemically castrated for being gay. Society finding you conventionally unattractive and thus passing you over for a promotion at work isn't exactly the same thing. People are discriminated against for lots of reasons, many subconscious, but protected categories didn't emerge from a vacuum. The reason being queer is protected whereas being short or ugly isn't has nothing to do with queer people having more power in government (lol) but because there was a history of actual violence, much of which was state-sanctioned, against queer people.
Then again being in a protected category has never really helped me avoid discrimination; having enough money to afford competent legal representation did. I wonder how many Americans can afford that when the majority can't make a $500 emergency expense. I'd argue the poor are the most clearly discriminated against group in our society and clearly there's a history of direct and indirect violence against them on that basis alone, but capitalism requires their existence and so they're invisible to our judicial system.
As for the first part of your comment, I'd just like to ask: what is up with disadvantaged groups fighting one another about who's more disadvantaged?
I do agree about poverty; that's a big disadvantage and is often itself the foundation of another prejudice. That's another group that the law fails to protect.
If I’m hiring for a programming opening, the entire (and proper) purpose of interviewing is to discriminate against people who can’t or won’t be effective programmers.
Being “not an effective programmer” is not a protected class and discriminating against them is fine when hiring programmers.
“But, but, but that’s not discrimination!” Yes, it most certainly is in the “recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another” sense, and is very likely what GP meant when they wrote:
> Essentially every non-random decision affecting treatment of people discriminates on some basis.
I think that's a strawman, but a useful one. It helps to establish the bounds of reasonable judgement in hiring. I think most people will agree that "can't or won't do the job" is reasonable.
Why add such an example here? No one has claimed that discriminating among multiple candidates is never okay.
I'm simply challenging the idea that the law is a useful guide as to whether discrimination is ok.
I like a phrase you used. Decisions should be based on "judgment (not pre-judgment)".
Good luck suing a potential employer because you were discriminated against outside of some protected class.
It definitely is okay to discriminate over personal attributes, character and previous experiences, and employ the person who you want to work for you - which is not necessarily the same as the person 'most deserving of a job'. Freedom of association is an important right, people should be free to choose whom to deal with, and imposing restrictions on it (like the protected groups) is morally justified as an exception only if required by important reasons, for example, preventing the social harm done by racial discrimination in employment; in the default condition people should be free to refuse to associate with anyone simply because they don't want to.
That reason is the same for any marginalized group: "preventing the social harm done by X discrimination".
Why not simplify the statement and say "preventing the social harm done by discrimination"?
Accepting discrimination against some people is inherently a hateful position.
If nobody in the village wants to work with Bob because he's an asshole, they should be able to discriminate against Bob (and other assholes) as the social harm of Bob being unemployed and unemployable does not justify the social harm caused by the state coercing people to work with Bob, violating their freedom to choose. It would be harmful (and IMHO immoral) to prohibit discrimination against assholes. Freedom of association - and the freedom of not-associating it implies - is not inherently hateful, it is one of fundamental human rights that should be curtailed only if other alternatives aren't feasible - merely having some reason or some harm prevented is not necessarily enough.
But I see your point.
And I'm not arguing that no one should ever be allowed to discriminate for any reason. I'm simply flipping the script: instead of the default position being that discrimination is acceptable, discrimination should require justification.
Someone might be willing to publicly say "we don't hire assholes" and defend it. Go for it. It would be much harder to say "we don't hire short people" or "we don't hire dalits" and defend that.
For private action, it literally does mean that it is legally acceptable.
What people find acceptable other than legally is subjective and will have infinite differences of opinion.
I don't believe the parent poster was implying it wasn't legally acceptable. They were making a value statement.
Yet we obsess over skin colour and genitalia, without a single peep about the physical appearance discrimination that most humans take part in.
However, it's been shown repeatedly that "fuckability" results in better treatment in most other aspects of one's life, including things like job opportunities, career progression, and general treatment in non-romantic social interactions. All of these are scopes that modern society hyperfocuses on when race or gender are involved. That's the hypocritical aspect of it.
What are you possibly going to do about it that isn't already covered under a more general and better fitting "lets find ways to treat each other fairly that minimizes the opportunity for our monkey brains to fuck up and associate traits and characteristics with superficial features. there has got to be a way to do this, jesus christ"?
By focusing on just that aspect, fuckability, you imply that there is something different about this trait that needs special attention outside of finding ways to deal with each other fairly despite the tendency to judge based on appearances. There isn't a way that doesn't start getting weird immediately.
OP is using "fuckability" as an example of something that doesn't get attention to highlight we shouldn't have any special categories and indeed just "treat each other fairly".
Secondly, all those characteristics are subjective, and are continuous measurements, not discrete properties. How do you define short or unattractive?
> Notably, the magnitude of the earnings disparities along the perceived attractiveness continuum, net of controls, rivals and/or exceeds in magnitude the black-white race gap and, among African-Americans, the black-white race gap and the gender gap in earnings
The "one drop of blood" school of thought.[1]
It doubles with each generation (this stops being true remarkably quickly but let's use single-static-assignment to ignore cousin marriage), so while someone with perfect information could say "so-and-so has precisely 14 ancestors from West Africa in a generation where the remaining 242 ancestors are all European", it's easier to say they're 5% African-descended.
Or Black, by the old American rules around race. I did say it's a thought-stopping category.
(This is obviously separate from any sexual harassment etc in the workplace -- I'm referring to compensation and promotions)
Not only are they biases, there is some data that shows attractiveness, height, etc actually correlate with competency. It might be a true stereotype (self-fulfilling or not).
Whereas discrimination exist based of height, weight, and facial symmetry, because they are a little less based on cultural factors, they tend to cross group boundaries and not allow for culture wars because of its more evenly distributed nature. The interesting thing is that the fact that you took the time to write a comment about them and that they are becoming a social issue is because the culture spheres tend to be bigger and more intertwined with globalization. People who share the same issues can find eachother and aggregate across cultural identities. The incel "movement" is a product of the world wide web, I don't think it would have been possible in another era.
On another hand, I don't think we need to establish hierarchies between discriminations. Although discriminations share a lot of their logic, they also often respond to their own logic. I am all in favor to put in place more mechanisms to avoid it, like any kind of anonymization, but I don't they are an argument against what's already put in place against more socially recognized ones.
Of course, now there is a form of more or less globalized standard of attractiveness that is more influenced by group that have the more power but that also has to open itself, the more globalized it becomes. But that globalized standard also challenges locally defined attractiveness. I take this is what you mean when you say that "attractiveness is not evenly distributes among races".
(Instagram seems to be the symbol of that struggle for cultural dominance in the realm of attractiveness standards as it is massively used as a tool to capitalize on one's own attractiveness.)
2.Which is why I wrote "a little less" because I did not want to digress too much.
No, it doesn't. Not being fit merely tells you that they might have lifestyle choices different from your own.
Or they might be female with PCOS. Or they might have a disease that causes fatigue or pain when they exercise. Heck, that might be the very reason for their desk job. Or a history of food insecurity and really need the insurance the job provides to be able to afford therapy, if they are even to that point. Heck, they might just not be knowledgeable enough to separate bad health advice from good health advice and despite trying things out, feel stuck. It isn't like I learned how to care for my body in school, after all. Health class focused on STDs and parts of the body while physical education classes were more focused on sports, rules, and being a good teammate.
The reality is that being overweight only tells you that they are overweight.
Quite an assumption you have there. Industrial food is cheap and crowds out normal food. Some areas are basically food deserts. A significant portion of the population also has health issues that complicate maintaining a healthy weight.
So called "food deserts" are a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Are the restaurants in your area a reflection of the eating habits of the people in that area, or a grand conspiracy to keep us unhealthy? I tend towards the former.
I am also skeptical that even in "food deserts" an enterprising individual can't acquire rice and beans.
for example, if they have recently made the decision to stop smoking cigarettes, thereby making a positive change in their lifestyle and health, this shows strength of character. it also demonstrates their ability to question past poor decisions rather than give in to the sunk cost fallacy, and then take steps to correct them. and of course, it also tends to make you put on weight [0] ... although not much more that 10 lb or 5 kg it seems, so interviewer beware, i guess ;)
0. <https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000811.htm>
I'd recommend keeping fitness a top priority especially as one gets older. Not only does everything get easier when not overweight, but the energy boost and appearance improvements certainly helps your confidence and presentation in every possible way.
I'm not someone you'd consider a "pretty" man even by a long shot, but being fit with a healthy BMI makes a world of difference nonetheless.
(I took serious stock some time not too long ago and realised weight lifting and being strong wasn't enough when actually overweight. Have dropped 15% of my body weight through dieting and the difference is amazing. I'm closer to fifty).
I've always had a hard time articulating my advice on this matter, because it's easy to be shallow, and it's insensitive because not everyone can act on it. But for those who can, it's more about being pragmatic.
It might be small things like quitting alcohol, not using smart phones until the early hours every single night - so getting enough, better quality sleep. And getting a water carbonator with the money saved from the drink, thus improving your skin through better hydration. And squeezing some walks in here and there eg by parking further away, or taking the stairs, when before you wouldn't.
Taking hard personal responsibility for your own health, I'm sure most everyone could find something to improve on.
I have a long list still to go through for myself - but I've accepted that minor transgressions one day can be balanced out by being better the next few days. Thus one can achieve balance without going crazy.
For me Intermittent Fasting has been an incredible eye opener, and weight shredder. This included learning about nutrition. On this, DIY food box deliveries (eg Everyplate, the simpler/cheaper version of Hello Fresh) are extremely high value compared to eg Uber Eats deliveries - both nutritionally, and financially. It takes effort, of course - but that's part of HTFU.
Finally, going through a process of decluttering and cleaning my home after my separation - changing these habits have been very healthy for my mental state. Perhaps this goes twice for someone with ADHD, like myself. When I'm home now, I truly feel at peace; it's changed my attitude into a more positive one, which has improved my energy and clarity of thinking.
It's all about habits, and mental and physical health interconnect; maintaining both certainly takes discipline and effort. The effects are observable, though, and everyone judges everything all the time on an unconscious level. Fair or not - as biological beings that's just how it is.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/so-sue-me/201408/do-...
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.
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.
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.
Entirely possible they're filtered out by recruiters and/or HR, of course.
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.
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?
Ages ago, I witnessed the execs toss resumes with "funny sounding names". One of those anecdotal experiences that made a huge impression on me. Having grown up surrounded by immigrants and misc POC -- people are just people -- chucking resumes based on non-whiteness really pissed me off.
This issue always reminds me of symphony auditions. To remove bias, candidates perform behind a screen.
The caveat that gives me pause is the burden of filtering out "spam" resumes. It was such a chore the last time I helped with hiring. I can only imagine it's gotten worse.
Perhaps resumes should be deanonymized by HR. Two step process. First, potential applicants are authenticated. Next, PII is stripped before the hiring team gets the bulk of the resumes.
But what do I know? Hiring and interviewing is snafu everywhere these days. Adding more hoops and friction will probably fly like a lead zeppelin.
Isn't this preferable though, when there's hopefully other, more meaningful, evidence that can potentially mitigate these easy but weaker biases?
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.
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.
> Data were collected from 229 participants working in a management position in the United States through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants were compensated at a rate equivalent to $7 per hour.
I have a hard time imagining people in "management positions" working on Mechanical Turk for less than (US) minimum wage.
If I understand correctly, participants also didn't rate applications with photos, but just photos. Seems possible and perhaps likely that the pragmatics of this specific task would activate biases that may not be at play (or to a lesser degree) in an actual application process where the photo would be just one piece of information. The task really seems designed to maximize effects of beautification while sacrificing generalizability to real-world settings.
With many sick people, it's also impossible not to discriminate (although that also correlates heavily to getting old).
The older generations are responsible for training and passing the torch onto the younger generations. The older generation can't keep clinging onto power until they die off.
,, The older generations are responsible for training and passing the torch onto the younger generations.''
That's not how the world works anymore. But of course experienced people are payed well to manage unexperienced.
A tale as old as time. Politicians who are attractive have a huge perception advantage. And political campaigns that use actors (who are almost by definition attractive) appeal to these same competence biases.
Do you see how insane this sounds?
The important thing is that this all gets sussed out via whiteboard coding questions, where the candidate is put in a usually windowless box with some alpha coder, and told to solve math puzzles under time pressure, and are then judged based on "culture fit".
That reminds me. Does anyone know how to buy bike desks like the ones in The Zero Theorem?
I'd like to add them to our bull pen and interview setup, now that we're back in the office:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7my1G0TrwT8
(I've found that examples of what not to do are often the most useful.)
I.e. don't confuse having an advantage or disadvantage with destiny. We make our own destinies by the choices we make.
That's cute but very disconnected from reality.
Reality is full of examples of people who have overcome disadvantages. Edison suffered severe hearing loss as a child, for example.
Imagine the great things a genius like Srinivasa Ramanujan could have achieved if he had the privilege of a proper formal education and wouldn't have lived at the poverty line for most his life, which ultimately caused him to die young.
For every Edison there's literally millions of (mostly) poor people, who for one reason or another (be that born with the wrong genitalia, wrong skin colour, or at the wrong place) simply never even get the chance to develop their full potential no matter how hard they try.
Denying the impact of pure happenstance on people's destiny is denying a large part of reality. Unfortunately not everyone is lucky enough to be born into a supporting family or a country that offers actual opportunities in life.
edit: basically what I'm trying to say is that it's incredibly hard to roll a 7 when using a single D6 versus someone rolling two D20s :)
I recommend you read a biography on Edison's early life.
Or just look at America itself. It was not settled by rich people, or even middle class people. It was settled by destitute people, criminals running from the law, indentured servants, and slaves.
It became the richest country in the world, with the largest and wealthiest middle class.
Why do you think millions of people desperately try to get into the US every year? What do they know that you're overlooking?
There's no defeatism, just a healthy dose of reality. It's not a theory either, it's a fact that can be demonstrated by statistics and even put in numbers (though I'm not a fan of GINI and the like).
> Too many counterexamples.
I recommend you look at the dire state of many people around the globe and throughout history. History only tells the story of those who made it - nobody writes about the millions who failed and why. It's an inherent bias that distorts our perception.
> Or just look at America itself.
I explicitly mentioned countries that provide opportunities, of which the US is one. Though it wasn't everyone who immediately benefitted; the slaves and the indigenous people weren't so lucky in their time, for example. The gain for some was a loss for the others.
> Why do you think millions of people desperately try to get into the US every year?
For the exact reason I mentioned: because they grew up in places that simply don't allow them to achieve their goals, no matter how hard they try. How many fail to cross the border or get rejected and how many are deported later?
Thousands of refugees die every year while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. Were the survivors truly masters of their own destiny or did they just get lucky? Is it talent, determination and the right attitude that gets them out of the refugee camp on Lampedusa; or are they at the mercy of a cold and uncaring bureaucracy that just wants to get rid of them?
I'm not saying only certain people can achieve their life goals. What I'm saying is that determination and talent alone are not always sufficient. Circumstances play a major role in life.
Call me cynical, but for every success story there's a hundred young people who didn't live to their 21st birthday in the favelas of Rio or in the slums of Lagos.
Your perception might be different and I'm not trying to convince you, I like your optimism, even though I don't share it.
Either that or our tall people worshiping culture had time enough to shape those children's world view. I also wonder though if children aren't a bit biased because their own parents, the people who feed and love and protect them, happen to be giants from their point of view.
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1346512327353491461...
It's a gross thing to consider but I wonder if the filter lightened the skin of black female applicants. These results are disappointing but unfortunately not surprising.
https://www.e-ir.info/2020/04/11/critical-reflections-on-eth...
Well, light skin preference for females persists to this day in African populations and every other population.
It was also present -- and documented even in Africa -- before any European presence existed, so it's strange to say that Europeans imported it. And darker skin is usually preferred for men.
Do you have a source for that? I'm not disagreeing, only curious.
https://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2006/12/skin-color-preferen...
https://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2013/08/perception-of-skin-...
Another observation he's made is that black children are born light and darken, with a noticeable sex difference:
- Black males darken until eventually they reach adult darkness.
- Black females darken until puberty, at which point they are darker than they will be as adults. One of the changes they experience during puberty is a lightening of their skin.
At the risk of sounding conceited, when it gave me (black male) a bad score, I knew something had to be wrong. I went and searched for photos of famous black males generally accepted as attractive and noticed it also gave them poor scores.
That gave me a hunch about what was going on, and lo and behold: taking the same exact photos, but processed to black and white and brightened, resulted in extremely high scores.
The model was essentially measuring how light your skin is.
So if the model was trained on who folks wanted to date (as a measure of attractiveness) the model could still be somewhat accurate, even though not accurately measuring attractiveness.
How would models work on rating who would be a good NBA player / runner etc. I wonder if just being white would get me downrated.
Terrible pictures don't make you more attractive on dating sites...
It's just a bad model. There's bound to be bias in the model but ML 101 would be randomize saturation and hue on your training set
That said, I wouldn't jump to conclusions on how things like saturation or desaturation play into ratings, a lot of instagram filters for example have an a desaturation effect which makes me wonder if folks like that as a look. I don't personally.
Very well could be a bad model, but sometimes there are underlying factors that result in these bad models from the training set. And no, it's no ML 101 to randomize elements of your input in the training set, though if you want a broadly applicable model you'd look to have inputs that include a variety of hue and saturation (perhaps that's what you meant - I have seen folks though manually start doing things like randomize hue in the set, where the ratings were on the original image).
Apparently still an issue. When two friends of mine, a black woman and a white man, got married, they had to find a specific photographer who specialized in simultaneously photographing black and white people.
I have heard that Google tries to control for this by having one panel of people as the Interviewers (i.e. actually meet/talk to the Interviewee) who then write-up their respective reports. This set of reports are then submitted to another panel (who have NOT met/talked to the Interviewee) who then have to make a hiring decision based solely on the reports.
At that point the panel makes the call based on a biased report and it thinks the decision is unbiased which is not true.
As an example no words which might create a impression but sticking to facts. The inference is left to the second panel. For example instead of saying the candidate thought hard about the given problem say something like the candidate tried out 3 different solutions to the problem over the interview time period. The first panel are merely conveyors of Data; so their reports have to be detailed and to the point.
For example if I'm interviewing someone for a technical position and they're very attractive or even dressed/groomed excessively I'm making an effort to not hold that against them. I'm aware that I have a bias on this so I'm actively trying to have a balanced perspective during the interview.
superimposed eye lashes that are a little misplaced
extremely blurred skin far beyond removing blemishes
lol
If I want to hire a hard core algorithm coder or a top level security specialist, I might not consider a neat and polished resume a negative signal, but I certainly wouldn't consider a less polished resume a negative signal. Because my experience with the type of people that are very good at those skills is that many couldn't care less about their profile photo or the font they use on their resume.
Your first point raised about someone caring about their looks and the way their presented is a good one. But this last quote is strange.. If you're being hired for a non customer facing role do you really think this craigslist comparison is a fair one? I can get as gussied up as I can for a photo, but is it fair that the guy that looks more like Jake Gyllenhaal got hired even though I have a better skill set?
But it does.
Though I suspect this varies quite a bit by role.
I read an article on LinkedIn [1] touching on a similar issue. The ideal resume quality standard is "not a lesson that every school or household teaches equally" and giving undue consideration to it may be "creating unnecessary barriers to entry for certain groups."
However, I think your experience in the hiring process is valid and would be open to changing my mind.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisi...
What?
It's similar to the issues with standardized testing in schools. If your parents are wealthy and able to get you better test prep or tutoring, you'll do better on the test, and likely be actually more academically successful aside from it. It doesn't mean that one should totally ignore that signal, but it does confound it if you're trying to be fair about things in a more holistic sense.
I think of it in tech as being acutely similar to folks who complain about recruiters who care a lot about your side projects or OSS contributions. If you're rich and successful, you have more time for those sorts of things than someone who's less well off and taking care of their family or such outside of work. That doesn't mean that someone who maintains a major OSS project isn't likely a good engineer, but that you should understand that not everyone who is a good engineer can casually do a second job on the side.
You can ask a candidate "have you worked with React before". You can ask a candidate "It's not on your resume, but do you have security certifications". You can ask them "do you have any OSS projects you contribute to or like".
Those are all reasonable questions.
The imagined answer you mention "may" happen for any question. You didn't mess up if you ask "do you know React?" and the candidate answers "my last job used Vue, and I didn't have time to learn it on my own due to having 2 religions, 6 disabilities, and 12 kids, so no".
Asking a candidate for work-related experience is not "extremely inappropriate", and your imagined answer is not realistic.
Essentially, as long as your question has a reasonable answer that doesn't involve bringing up any of the protected attributes, it's fine.
Does this disqualify them from consideration?
Resume quality IS actually pretty easy to pick up on. Some folks go totally overboard for non-design roles - I'd say there probably is a tasteful middle ground (ie, not super long with pages and pages - I've had folks do essentially powerpoints) and not just a mono font list in all caps (often some kind of auto resume spam mess). If you take the time to do a 1 or 2 page MAX clean resume, quasi responsive to posting, with a brief email note you are ahead of 60% of candidates already. With this hiring market it doesn't matter - employers will chase you anyways.
I don't think a resume's level of polish is more biased towards social status than any other part of the process, and as such I think it's just as reasonable as anything else to filter on.
Anyway, resume quality is arguably just as relevant to a software job as being able to whiteboard code, if not moreso. Structuring design documents in a way that wealthy people like them (i.e. the old white dudes who run the company) is one of the most relevant job skills you can have to be honest.
The ugly just sadly don’t have affirmative action to compensate for this sort of thing.
People who have been dealt a bad hand by Nature need to be aware of all sorts of cognitive biases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) and then find ways to bypass them to focus on their strengths.
In other words, a professionally done photo of a goblin-like human will be viewed more negatively than a selfie of an attractive person.
I'll pay you back.
Fuck me right?
"executive style hair"
I think some other countries do, but the norms are decidedly against that in the USA, probably to avoid biases like this.
Maybe yours does, but plenty don't.
It does not matter if you are interviewing for an opening which has been set aside for you. (Niche skills, nepotism, former colleagues, etc.)
It does matter if you are going for a fungible position with many applicants. Not a lot, but people are biased to hire others who they think they'd enjoy spending time around.
That bias helps attractive people, as well as people who look and act like part of an org's "in-group" (if one exists). It's ugly and gross, but it seems pretty fundamental to human nature.
Beyond that attractive people are more confident.
Let's do a test. Who would you imagine is the better engineer of these two old timey people?
https://i.imgur.com/omRXYde.png
and
I don't think it's necessarily about being attractive with all else being equal, it's more about the level of effort in one's appearance. Once that is accounted for, it's probably likely there is some of the usual bias towards better looking people.
Biases are frustrating and annoying and I used to think they weren't worth worrying about. Then I went from obese to healthy weight and noticed the ways people treated me differently. Now I acknowledge that they have an effect and try to remove my own, but it's not perfect.
The Cheeto-dust legible-t-shirt look is unfashionable in tech and probably not a great idea. Been true since the late '00s at least. I think the put-together woman wins in that match up.
> compared to another dude in a t-shirt?
Depends. Is the t-shirt $150 retail, made of merino wool, and sporting a small brand logo that the interviewer will recognize from the gear lists on that minimalism/travel blog they really like?
I hate to say it but it probably depends on the gender.
What I will say is anecdotal and probably controversial but it is just my observation:
I've seen all kinds of talented male devs and there's huge variance in their looks. Some good looking and some not.
But when it comes to talented female devs: they all looked a certain type. I'll let you people decide what I mean.
Yes, profiling people sucks but .... sometimes it yields results.
It's a throw away account, can you just say what you mean? Honestly no type came to mind when I did a quick mental scrollback.
[EDIT] For the record, I've seen women with that look who weren't very good, and I've seen plenty who looked different from that who were good. I don't agree with their broader assessment.
Hopefully remote work would help establish practices like interviewing over zoom with a camera off. There's potential concerns about someone else completing the coding challenges for the candidate, or otherwise more blatant cheating. But that could be accomplished by, say, capturing video and only reviewing it after a hiring decision has been made.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, let me share my personal experience. Over a period of a year in my early thirties, I became more conventionally attractive by: purchasing clothes from StitchFix (a styling service), getting my hair cut regularly by a stylist, adopting a regular grooming routine, and exercising (especially weight lifting) frequently. Prior to this I dressed like a negatively stereotypical engineer with baggy/unstylish clothing, little to no grooming routine, and little to no exercise.
People of all sexes and sexual orientations unquestionably treat me better than they did before. They are more open, more willing to give me their time and attention, quicker to trust me. I’m given favors like extra services (a barista telling me I can cut the line and give her my order directly), or small free things (bartender comping a drink for no reason). And frankly, people just look at me more. I used to feel completely invisible walking down the street, never catching anyone’s eye - not the case anymore.
Because the change happened over a relatively short period of time, and because I spent my entire adult life prior not engaging in these intentional efforts to be “attractive”, the contrast was extremely obvious.
There is a dark side to all this that I’m not going to get into, but I will say that having experienced the contrast I do feel motivated to maintain some level of attractiveness for the preferential treatment.
That seems unlikely.
Most of us could stand to gain some degree of advantage, but I'm pretty there some people whose appearance is unfortunate enough that no amount of grooming, hygiene, physical fitness, or clothing will ever compensate for what fate or genetics has burdened them with.
The best part is, there isn't one single right way. Most people will notice and respect the effort, even if the particular style isn't their first choice.
There might be other things in the way -- emotional barriers, etc -- which may be difficult to overcome. But that is a different matter. And that work would also be very worthwhile to pursue.
I think most people absolutely could benefit, but not necessarily enough to level the playing field with the most gorgeous among us, while for others there really may be nothing they can do to level the playing field against even the most shoddily dressed average looking person. I've got nothing against trying to do the best you can with the hand you've been dealt, and wouldn't discourage anyone from doing that, but when we're talking about the innate bias humans have when hiring I think it's worth admitting that some will always have a considerable disadvantage regardless of their best efforts.
The dark side is that attractiveness is a form of power. Having power changes people, especially if one has lived a large portion of their life without this particular expression of power.
Through this lens, excessive enjoyment of one's attractiveness and the impact that has on others can be seen as a form of megalomania; excessive confidence becomes arrogance, self-love becomes narcissism.
In short, it's easy to become an asshole, or mentally unwell.
"race" uhm no, you mean ethnicity or phenotype. "Rac"-ist language, though.
Hiyo!!!