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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

#241

Post by jpindar »

mcntsh wrote: post #211
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…

In the US, you're asked your ethnicity, gender, and sexuality on every job application. Just saying.

And they almost always say that that information is optional and will not afffect the hiring process.

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

#242

Post by noirbot »

TheDong wrote: post #166
erosenbe0 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not mentioned or on the resume, explicitly asking whether a candidate has contributed to OSS or has done side projects outside of work is extremely inappropriate. The answer may be, "No, I attend temple nightly after going to occupational therapy for my disability and taking care of my children." Then you will have to document this for HR because you done gone messed up.

That answer is not proportionate to the question, and the question is totally fine. 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'…

Exactly. I've always been told in hiring/legal meetings that it's ok if the candidate voluntarily discloses information about their religion/race/family status, you just can't go looking for it, and you probably shouldn't follow up about it.

Essentially, as long as your question has a reasonable answer that doesn't involve bringing up any of the protected attributes, it's fine.

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

#243

Post by spacexsucks »

jameshart wrote: post #235
turing_complete wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly I'm surprised it's acceptable for resumes presented to me as a hiring manager to even have names on them, let alone photos. Humans are hardwired to make snap judgements about people based on a first visual impression, and a photo at the top of a resume will massively color the rest of your assessment.

No names and photos on resumes is the way to go. I dont need to see who you know kn LinkedIn either.

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

#244

Post by specialist »

jameshart wrote: post #235
turing_complete wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly I'm surprised it's acceptable for resumes presented to me as a hiring manager to even have names on them, let alone photos. Humans are hardwired to make snap judgements about people based on a first visual impression, and a photo at the top of a resume will massively color the rest of your assessment.

Emphatic agreement.

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.

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

#245

Post by rramadass »

dumpHero2 wrote: post #64
faeriechangling wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Secret of Success is Sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made - Jean Giraudoux/George Burns (some versions replace Sincerity with Honesty).

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.

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

#246

Post by sokoloff »

leereeves wrote: post #236
sokoloff wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m struggling to find where else in dragonwriter’s words you could be finding support for prejudice. It’s less of a strawman than it was a simple example of where discriminating among multiple candidates is okay.

> It’s less of a strawman than it was a simple example of where discriminating among multiple candidates is okay. 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)".

It definitely seems like we agree here; I was thrown off course by [perhaps my interpretation of?] your words: “I'm surprised to see you defending prejudice.”

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

#247

Post by twoxproblematic »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #220

From the article: > 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,…

No post body was provided.

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

#248

Post by cntainer »

rramadass wrote: post #238
cntainer wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't the bias still be present in the report? For example if a candidate left a good impression on me I'll definitely make sure that the report captures that. Not because I'm a bad actor but because I don't know any better, I don't realize my good impression is biased. At that point the panel makes the call based on a biased report and it thinks the decision is unbiased which is not true.

The bias can be made negligent by mandating a certain format to the report (some Google insider has to provide this detail) and due to the fact that multiple such reports go into the decision-making. 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 lik…

I'm sure you can reduce bias in this way but it still feels incomplete. I'm thinking another (more efficient?!) way would be to teach interviewers to detect and manage their own biases, both positive and negative.

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.

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

#249

Post by rramadass »

cntainer wrote: post #248
rramadass wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bias can be made negligent by mandating a certain format to the report (some Google insider has to provide this detail) and due to the fact that multiple such reports go into the decision-making. 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 lik…

I'm sure you can reduce bias in this way but it still feels incomplete. I'm thinking another (more efficient?!) way would be to teach interviewers to detect and manage their own biases, both positive and negative. 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 b…

You simply cannot avoid many of the individual cognitive biases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases); they are hard-wired into our biological systems over centuries of evolution and operate unconsciously. Thus the need to mitigate their effects by conscious technique and process.

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

#250

Post by autoexec »

cafeoh wrote: post #188
hammock wrote: post #145

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. 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.

I'm hoping he comes up with a source too, but I imagine that the people we're all naturally biased toward generally get evaluated in the most favorable light so it'd be weird if there wasn't some data that showed they were more competent.
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