Landing a Job Interview in Germany Is All About Your Headshot

Clickbait title. A headshot appears to be important by custom but beyond that, there's no indication that it's a determining factor.

> A survey of HR representatives and hiring managers at German firms showed that more than half considered including a photo important, according to recruitment website Indeed. One in five said they wouldn’t consider an applicant who didn’t provide one.

> Not listing a date and place of birth would prompt 23% of the surveyed recruiters to disqualify them, the Indeed report said, and 13% considered providing information on citizenship a must. Some 8% said they ignore CVs that don’t include how many children an applicant has, even though it’s illegal to ask for such information.

What is the reason for all this?

Sounds like most of these are created to disqualify people for one reason or another.

This is a hard one. Back in the day, I though that the following things should be removed from all resumes / CVS

- Gender

- Date of birth

- Photos

- Religion

- Dates of schools and employment

etc.

But as it turned out (https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/discrimination-h...) - this did not at all stop discrimination against marginalized groups etc. IIRC, it actually made them worse off - because fundamentally strong candidates stood out in the resumes anyway, while weaker candidates still looked weak - and instead if giving the benefit of doubt to marginalized candidates, they now just looked like regular weak candidates.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/04a9t