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Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

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Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#61
post #12

> In study 2, beautifying filters increased the hireability only slightly for White female applicants, followed by White and Black male applicants but substantially for Black female applicants 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.

Cameras used to be notoriously bad at picking up dark skin colours correctly. Apps might fix it.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#62
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But when it comes to talented female devs: they all looked a certain type. I'll let you people decide what I mean. 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.

Not the parent, but I assume they mean the nose stud, green or blue hair that looks like it's needed to be redone for a month (but was, in fact, dyed yesterday), and at least one full-sleeve tattoo, look. [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.

Definitely seen that fashion, but never in a coding context. Must be an SF thing.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#63
post #34

I'm going to buck the trend and say that candidates with attractive photos are quite possibly actually more competent. When hiring, I consider the content of a resume and not its aesthetics. But the people who go the extra mile to add polish: An attractive, well-formatted resume; being well-dressed for an interview; and even adding polish to a photo - are likely candidates who express the added attention to detail I'…

Perhaps the "polish" of the resume is a signal for "professionalism and attention to detail." But I worry that the professionalism of the resume is a signal mostly for wealth and social status, factors which should be ignored in the hiring process. So I think that unless the resume is atrociously formatted, its "polish" should be ignored. I read an article on LinkedIn [1] touching on a similar issue. The ideal resume…

I'm somewhat curious if many indications of competence can be considered indications of wealth / social status?

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.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#64
post #34

I'm going to buck the trend and say that candidates with attractive photos are quite possibly actually more competent. When hiring, I consider the content of a resume and not its aesthetics. But the people who go the extra mile to add polish: An attractive, well-formatted resume; being well-dressed for an interview; and even adding polish to a photo - are likely candidates who express the added attention to detail I'…

Prejudice wouldn’t be such an issue if there weren’t a grain of truth in it. Pretty much any superficial indicator that you’ve lived a harder life than average can be used as a way to guess that you might be a worse employee due to some lingering baggage and a less privileged upbringing. The ugly just sadly don’t have affirmative action to compensate for this sort of thing.

I wasn't prepared for such harsh truth today.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#65
post #12

> In study 2, beautifying filters increased the hireability only slightly for White female applicants, followed by White and Black male applicants but substantially for Black female applicants 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.

I remember stumbling across a "beauty rating" site that had an ML model trained to rate photos on beauty. 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 th…

There are some studies I believe that show even attractive african american women can have trouble with low click through / match / rating on dating sites.

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.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#66
post #13

>Both male and female applicants whose photos were filtered were perceived as more competent 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.

Height as well. We instinctively think tall people make better leaders.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#67

When I was in England for a short time I was tasked with screening candidates for employment (software engineers). As an American, I was taken aback by most of the resumes including photos. That's just not done here in the US. Some American HR departments might even send back your resume and ask you to resubmit it without a photo. It seems to be standard practice in Europe, perhaps to convince you that the person int…

I’ve been a hiring manager in England for around 10 years and I can’t recall a single CV with a photo. I don’t know where these CVs were coming from that you received but it’s definitely not standard practice to send a CV with a photo here.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#68

When I was in England for a short time I was tasked with screening candidates for employment (software engineers). As an American, I was taken aback by most of the resumes including photos. That's just not done here in the US. Some American HR departments might even send back your resume and ask you to resubmit it without a photo. It seems to be standard practice in Europe, perhaps to convince you that the person int…

With or without, tons of companies will do "due diligence" and will look for your FB and Insta feeds, just in case you are drunk or drugged or whatever might seem inappropriate. Kinda creepy to go such lengths, but also some companies don't want people not smart enough to not post their shenanigans publicly.

Will they not hire you if you don’t have social media accounts? I could see them thinking that you are lying and trying to hide something.

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how long ago this was - photos on resumes is definitely not a thing in the UK anymore. Very common in some European countries (e.g. Germany), though.

Honestly, 20 years ago. And we were seeing a lot of non-English applicants in central London, no surprise there.

Those are some massive caveats that really should have been included in your original post

Re: Hacking attractiveness biases in hiring? The role of beautifying photo-filters

#70

When I was in England for a short time I was tasked with screening candidates for employment (software engineers). As an American, I was taken aback by most of the resumes including photos. That's just not done here in the US. Some American HR departments might even send back your resume and ask you to resubmit it without a photo. It seems to be standard practice in Europe, perhaps to convince you that the person int…

As others have pointed out, even without photos on resumes, often times the first thing I do when looking at a candidate is go to their LinkedIn profile, which of course do feature headshots.

Will you not hire them if they don’t have a LinkedIn profile (or any other social media accounts)?
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