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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

#181

Post by comprev »

projektfu wrote: post #16

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…

It’s not a UK cultural thing - never in my life or any friends who I asked have attached a photo - but it’s often done by applicants who might be UK residents when it’s considered the norm in their country of origin.

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.

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

#182

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

dragonwriter wrote: post #131
leereeves wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 dis…

> You are literally arguing in favor of the idea that “it’s ok to discriminate against anyone who isn’t protected”. 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 pro…

I worked with a manager who refused to hire a man who had, as his Facebook profile pic, a photo of himself holding a shotgun and deer. He was a hunter.

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

#183

Post by comprev »

sawmurai wrote: post #151
orangepurple wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you the hiring manager that had a problem with my @cocaine.ninja or @cock.li email address?

You made me almost catapult my breakfast through my nose xD

the use of the word catapult now got me - bravo!

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

#184

Post by omnicognate »

projektfu wrote: post #16

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 working as a programmer in the UK for ~20 years. I've interviewed a huge number of job candidates in that time and reviewed more CVs than I'd care to count. I have never seen a single CV with a photo on it.

Entirely possible they're filtered out by recruiters and/or HR, of course.

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

#185

Post by feanaro »

lifeformed wrote: post #167
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been amazed at the hypocrisy of all of this. A portion of attractiveness is culture-invariant, and quantifiable based on measurable factors such as facial symmetry. Study after study have demonstrated that humans innately treat attractive individuals better than others. Yet we obsess over skin colour and genitalia, without a single peep about the physical appearance discrimination that most humans take pa…

Two reasons: Short people have not faced anywhere near the scale of injustices as Black people in America historically have, so there is not much of a cultural desire to right the wrongs done to short people or people with slightly lower facial symmetry. Secondly, all those characteristics are subjective, and are continuous measurements, not discrete properties. How do you define short or unattractive?

How is race a discrete, and not a continuous, property? It seems quite obviously continuous too.

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

#186

Post by notahacker »

xenocratus wrote: post #170
lifeformed wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two reasons: Short people have not faced anywhere near the scale of injustices as Black people in America historically have, so there is not much of a cultural desire to right the wrongs done to short people or people with slightly lower facial symmetry. Secondly, all those characteristics are subjective, and are continuous measurements, not discrete properties. How do you define short or unattractive?

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715141 > 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

That's equal to the black-white and gender gap after affirmative action programs and laws making penalising minorities and women in hiring processes illegal though....

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

#187

Post by n4r9 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #96
albntomat0 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something isn't a legally protect group, doesn't mean discriminating against that group is acceptable.

> Just because something isn't a legally protect group, doesn't mean discriminating against that group is acceptable. 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.

What is legally acceptable is a laggy mirror of what society finds morally acceptable. Morals evolve over time and are gradually accepted by the majority before becoming law.

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

#188

Post by cafeoh »

hammock wrote: post #145
nostromo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of data out there showing that attractiveness, fitness (as in, not obese), and tallness are all massive biases in the workplace -- much bigger in many studies than biases around gender and ethnicity even. 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…

>There's a lot of data out there showing that attractiveness, fitness (as in, not obese), and tallness are all massive biases in the workplace -- much bigger in many studies than biases around gender and ethnicity even. 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).

Quite naturally I would imagine it makes you more competent in every role where you can be discriminated on those basis (customer-facing, or any job that's heavy on communication). Could make sense for the social worker role, less so for the IT specialist, but I'd be interested to know your source.

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

#189

Post by turing_complete »

projektfu wrote: post #16

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 am living in a country where photos on a resume are the norm and for me it is the other way round. I am interviewing a lot of people at the moment and having a picture with the resume really helps thinking of the applicant as a human being, rather than just a character sheet with skills and abilities. It also helps to remember and associate resumes, it's easier to relate a portrait to a set of skills and a CV than tens of names. You don't have to be a super model, just any professional picture will do that.

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.

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

#190

Post by cassepipe »

nostromo wrote: post #81
projektfu wrote: post #16

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…

There's a lot of data out there showing that attractiveness, fitness (as in, not obese), and tallness are all massive biases in the workplace -- much bigger in many studies than biases around gender and ethnicity even. 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…

The reason they are "obsessed over", or taken into account as someone else may put it, although I'll give you that any kind of social/cultural identity tends to lead to some form of obsession in some people's minds, is because they are deemed significant for locally dependent social/historical/political reasons which I am sure I don't need to give you examples of but will anyway : colonialism, slavery, genocides... You name it

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.

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