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0 pointsNadya11y ago0 comments

I'm well aware it's entirely a legal issue. Notice how I said the law is outdated? Laws aren't known for keeping up to date with technology.

Imagine a resume for a technological position as a programmer in a company. The person includes their Github account, where they are using a picture of themselves as their avatar. What do you do in that scenario? A personal picture is frequently used as an avatar on Github. Their repositories are highly relevant to the position in which they are applying - but you now have a photo of them.

Do you throw out the resume in fear of a discrimination lawsuit? Would you throw out a supermajority of the resumes you get because of this issue? Regardless of how qualified the individuals were?

Placing your Github handle is pretty common practice if you have good contributions. Using a picture of yourself as your avatar is also pretty common practice on Github.

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hn_11y ago

The law doesn't say "you can't ask candidates for their photo" it says "you can't discriminate based on race/gender/pregnancy status/ethnicity/age (>40)/national origin in hiring practices."

If you are soliciting or encouraging photos of someone for a software job it looks suspicious - why would you need to know what a candidate looks like when looks aren't part of how well you can write software? Then you start looking like you plan to discriminate. The idea is not to solicit photos of candidates when their looks are irrelevant to the position. One HR policy may say "don't accept resume with photos so it doesn't look like we encourage all candidates to send them." Note: that isn't law but it could be company policy to protect them. Where the line is drawn probably varies by company and is probably arbitrary. Linking to your GitHub that happens to also contain your photo is probably not a big deal to anyone. Having an online resume where half the screen is taken up by your picture is different, it is no different than a paper resume that has your smiling face in the corner. I don't use GitHub (I don't have the time - I'm too old) but I understand it to be a more "social" and "casual" atmosphere which a photo is acceptable while a resume is a "professional" document that might also link to a more "casual" document.

The "rule of thumb" of not including your photo with a resume is because it is irrelevant to your job qualifications and was previously used to openly discriminate. This is a big deal since people here at HN have shared their stories of discrimination based on age - would someone who is aging an a little over weight want to dedicate half a computer screen to their picture?

Companies may just request that any information sent to them doesn't include a photo - this is a reasonable request. With this request they have covered their legal basis of saying "we aren't judging your resume based on how you look" but also might not throw out something that gives away your looks.

NadyaOP11y ago

The issue here isn't soliciting photos of candidates. In this case it's the employer possibly throwing out a perfectly fine resume because it includes a photo because of laws that do not account for the existence of social media profiles and the increasing likelihood that people have their actual visual personas online as pictures and avatars.

>Linking to your GitHub that happens to also contain your photo is probably not a big deal to anyone.

Nor should it be.

>Having an online resume where half the screen is taken up by your picture is different

Discriminating in 5 seconds after seeing the first image or discriminating after viewing the Github profile changes nothing if there is going to be discrimination (intentional or not) take place. In this case, his Github profile (which also contains his picture) is one of the first things you end up seeing while looking through his resume.

>Companies may just request that any information sent to them doesn't include a photo - this is a reasonable request. With this request they have covered their legal basis of saying "we aren't judging your resume based on how you look" but also might not throw out something that has a photo.

A statement that protects a company on legal grounds but is not actually enforceable is one of the issues with our legal system. This statement, if anything, introduces a legal scapegoat for actual discrimination and bias to take place without punishment. Any minority that sends or includes a picture by accident or slight could be tossed into the trash with this statement as the scapegoat. "We said not to include pictures or this might happen!" If anything it hurts more than helps.

The entire area of discrimination can be a tricky one - as proving it is discrimination is rather tricky and troublesome. This is why many discrimination lawsuits take place after a person has had an interview. Where, regardless of the lack of photo, your employer now knows what you look like and can openly discriminate against you.

Removing photos from resumes may lower open discrimination - but it also makes it more difficult to prosecute for discrimination. If an employer is throwing out any resume with a picture of a minority - it becomes far easier to prove they are discriminating against minorities. Wouldn't you agree?

Require a company to retain any applications from the past 6~12 months and to require photos. Discrimination based on age, race, or gender would be easier to prove - as well as if a candidate was lacking required credentials on their resume, etc.

I'm willing to hear flaws with my proposed method and how the current method is superior.

danielvinson11y ago

But how would you change laws to best account for this? It is not a trivial task, and current lawmakers are on average not very good with technology, so there would be a lot of research.

The best thing to do as an employer is to ask the candidate to directly provide code samples. If they don't understand why this would be necessary (or understand your explanation), they are probably not going to be a good employee anyway.

That said, when I receive github links with resumes, I always look at them (and often spend a long time reviewing the code). If the user has a non-picture avatar it is very relieving. I wish GitHub and LinkedIn would provide a build-in service to change your photo into an avatar or something to avoid this.

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