Comment by imbnwa
4 years ago
I mean no one's made an argument why it shouldn't be _optional_ if it already isn't either, as well as people are confusing the context of HR/Hiring Manager's shifting through resumes and traversing their own social graph on LinkedIn whether by search or connections list.
This site could even, when it gets up to supporting some social graph, separate the two views, HR is using bookmarks/folder organization/some other means of solving that problem anyway so "photos key to memory" is irrelevant
> I mean no one's made an argument why it shouldn't be _optional_ if it already isn't either,
I'll give you an argument against optional headshots: Adverse selection.
Given the advantages and disadvantage of having a headshot, most of the folks omitting them will have good reason to do so. Which means that those who don't have a headshot will be disadvantaged further.
IOW, not having a headshot signals one of three things: "I care about my privacy more than most people", "I couldn't be bothered to include a headshot", or "I am a member of a group that experiences prejudice based on superficial characteristics, such as weight or race, and wish to avoid this". There is a long tail of possible reasons and variations on these, for example the privacy one could actually be more along the lines of "I am hiding from my violent ex", but you get the drift.
None of these possible reasons are ones that give a reader warm fuzzy feelings. If the profile owner is very lucky, the reader will treat the absence of a headshot as largely irrelevant metadata, but that's the best case scenario: one of merely avoiding negative associations. There is no actual upside (the one exception I can come up with is an employer actually looking for candidates who are fanatical about their privacy for some reason, perhaps for security-related positions).
At least when you include a headshot you are only going to get hit with the actual relevant prejudice (which is a social filter that can be useful to you), rather than a stew of prejudices attached to all the imagined or assumed reasons for the image's absence, none of them consciously or coherently articulated.
> There is no actual upside
...unless the "I would experience prejudice" reason is correct.
That's the absence of a downside, which isn't quite the same thing. There is practically no scenario where not having a headshot gives you an advantage over those who have headshots.