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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> 2. Photos really don't belong in hiring in the US.

The author of the post is in Sweden, not the US.

As weird as it sounds, profile photos are prominent features of resumes in many European countries. It shocked me when I first started hiring in our EU offices, but that's just the way it is. I was surprised because we've often been told so many different ways that Europe is ahead of the US in matters of discrimination, but then I got there and resumes were full of profile pictures and even discussion about their marital status. I had our recruiter over there start erasing these things from resumes and they thought I was crazy.

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The discrimination in Europe works slightly differently than in the US, as having a native sounding name is just as, or even more, important than having a "right" skin color.

So to be certain you'll avoid discrimination, you'd need to omit both the photo and the name from the CV, and that's not common at all.

Should we also hide the names of the universities we went to and the names of former employers we worked at?

Confused, what are you implying?

There's bias towards certain big name institutions. Perhaps we should prevent discrimination on this basis by omitting those references.

Also, because those big name institutions have bias towards certain types of students - and train them to think/act in certain ways.

It often works, which is why they do it.

You do for the UK Civil Service

> Please ensure you remove references to your: ... educational institutions

https://www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/ipo-recruitment-sup...

Sure! Why not? Especially if we all know that that is the main determining factor of the recruiter, and the recruiter is completely protected from any discrimination. You can simply lie, regardless.

If the employer won't digitally sign their denial of my resume,or even acknowledge the reason for my denial, I'm not digitally signing mine; which means it's a theatre of discrimination disguised as "filtering" from BOTH sides.

I'm surprised so many prolific firms beyond FAANG still treat hiring like the big accounting firms of yore did/do.

how is that discrimination other than signaling you know the language, have a job permit and so on.

Because then employers will treat the absence of that signal as a potential concern?

yes, because it is

Look, "potential concerns" shouldn't matter unless they're real concerns. Judging someone based on "potential concerns" is discrimination. Judge someone based on who they are, not who you think they might be.

in theory yes but people judge you for school or whatever on a CV anyway

Which is why discrimination laws exist. The fact that people do it doesn't make it right.

Because you’re assuming just from the name or photo thay someone knows the language and have job permit.

This means children from immigrant families growing up in Europe would be discriminated against simply because of how they look and what their last name is.

That’s classic discrimination.

this you will see on their education history though, but sure thats the same for europeans in china too and so on

Okay, so if I put down that education history, then what? I can lie.

My points are that hiring should be more based on applied challenges and gauging recruit success in context. The heavy cost of vetting should be part of the onboarding, not recruiting; which would put the onus on the employer and away from the often discriminated employee.

Reminds me of the story of someone with the first name "Kim" who had to put "Mr." in front of it on his résumé to get any interviews. Depressing.

> I was surprised because we've often been told so many different ways that Europe is ahead of the US in matters of discrimination

Maybe it's possible to have profile photos in resumes and to be "ahead of the US in matters of discrimination"

> Maybe it's possible to have profile photos in resumes and to be "ahead of the US in matters of discrimination"

Nope, discrimination is immense here. In US, people at least acknowledge that there is discrimination and something has to be done. Here in EU, we simply deny its existence and accuse the victim of malice and dividing the nation. I actually had this realisation of the issue/difference after a medium stay at US and coming back.

‘Culture fit’ interviews in Europe don’t beat around the bush - they mean right down to the frat/sorority/school, hobbies, and if you like the right beer everyone else does.

In the Netherlands, the hiring managers would even ask the women exactly when they were planning on having kids - and the men what their plans were for wife/kids. Down to the year.

Once you were in, you were golden though.

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