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> Also: never, ever put a photograph of yourself in your resume. You're just asking for someone to judge you based on your looks, gender, age, or ethnicity. Likewise, don't put your age. If you've been around for a while, trim everything but the last 5-10 years of positions off your resume to avoid the unfortunate but oh-so-common ageism. Even old hiring managers can be ageist! Don't give anyone a chance to judge you on irrelevant characteristics until you've firmly established your appeal to the employer.

In Germany, you ALWAYS put a photograph in your resume.

Here, you can use this one: https://portfolio.stavros.io/escapism/escapism@973.jpg

It depends on where you apply I guess.

I work at a startup and we get a mixed amount of applications with a photo and without, doesn't really make a difference for us.

You could explicitly specify that you want applications without photos (or age data, or other private stuff). That can encourage people to apply who otherwise might not.

> In Germany, you ALWAYS put a photograph in your resume.

Not really.

The more educated people are about this topic (e.g. have read "The Google Resume" by Gayle McDowell, which I highly recommend), or have had startup experience, the less common it is.

We all should stop doing it, everybody will benefit.

Not "Not really". It's the majority by far.

Yes "Not really". The majority is not really everybody.

I think something has been lost in translation here. At least in the US and UK, responding with "Not really" to a statement usually implies that the statement is completely incorrect. As in, you aren't offering a simple correction from "everyone" to "a majority", but rather suggesting that it isn't even a majority.

I've lived quite a long time in the U.S if I say not really I don't mean it's completely incorrect - I do mean there are very glaring omissions though.

It depends. Larger companies with traditional HR departments stickung to "the rules" will sort you out.

Smaller companies like startups, especially without large HR, don't care about photos.

I never place a photo, martial status, or birthdate on my CV. Yet, I even got hired by Novartis (in Austria).

If a German company of any size really were to sort me out sure to those "omissions" on my CV, it's probably for the better - I doubt we could ever be a match.

What I actually find more problematic is that you traditionally put your marriage status in your CV in Germany.

If you haven't married your partner but have children together, they might think you are a single parent. If you are married, they worry that you might get kids and take parental leave (which is by law quite generous in Germany compared to other countries). And so on. I personally leave that out now.

In a number of European countries it's common/required to include a headshot on your CV. Birthdate is also often included. But I agree that, whenever possible, don't include this information.

Starting with your "Passions" felt really offputting and weird. I don't think that that list is stuff you are genuinely "passionate" about. That said I, I don't hire people, maybe it's effective.

A hiring manager needs an easy way to see what you're all about. Many candidates put a word cloud of technologies and software here but I've found that people are often pretty weak on many things included here. Word clouds don't have any context, either. The hiring manager has know way of knowing if this person knows just a little bit of a technology or if they do it all day, every day.

I call them "passions" because these are what I love to do at work. I'm confident about talking at length about any of them.

> As a hiring manager, I much prefer simpler resumes that are easy to scan. I don't really like the "five stars" self-rating stuff, however. It feels a little strange to distill one's language knowledge down to a number.

I don't like it either, and it looks especially bad when coming from someone with little experience. Occasionally I see someone working as a junior developer and putting 4/5 stars in Ruby, 5/5 stars in CSS, 3/5 in JavaScript.

I feel what these people mean is that they are most proficient in CSS, then in Ruby, then in JavaScript, not that they're experts in CSS, but this is not obvious.

Or in a true Socratic way, the less stars they rated for themselves, the more they know about the tech.

Wanted to add that I also dislike rating language proficiency on a scale.

If you have 5/5 for a language, I expect you to be as knowledgeable as the authors of the language

The author of the language is not necessarily the most knowledgeable in how to use it.

Maybe not the best individual but still very likely someone who deserves such a high rating

I think it helps to say "relative proficiency in each language". For example, I would say I have 2/5 in Python, and 5/5 in PHP. I'm not saying that I'm the best PHP developer in the world, just that personally I'm much stronger in PHP than in Python.

But relative to what? How do you compare two candidates with "5/5 in PHP"? I want to know your absolute proficiency.

By looking at everything else on their CV and portfolio. There is no such thing as "absolute proficiency".

> You're just asking for someone to judge you based on your looks, gender, age, or ethnicity

Could that work in your favor too?...

Yep, if you're a cute almost 30 dude with 20-ish looks applying, say, to a CTO position in a startup otherwise consisting of college kids... AKA my situation except I'm not looking right now. Yeah, I'd say there are situations when being judged by your looks gives you an advantage. That said, I didn't hunt a job for a long while and almost never in the Western countries (sending your CV to places that offer visa/relocation and never getting contacted doesn't really count) so maybe I don't know some local specifics, don't quote me on this.