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swengw | 12 years ago

It doesn't address the real gender discrimination issues, but having gender-balanced HR departments could have helped Kim O'Grady. Currently, if you include your photo in your resume, being a beautiful (rather than average-looking) woman seems to lower your chance of getting an interview [1].

[1] http://www.economist.com/node/21551535

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notahacker|12 years ago

Having a culture in which it was normal to post resumes with photographs would also have benefited Kim O Grady...

Either way, HR didn't hate him because he was beautiful, and there are conceivable reasons why even a gender balanced HR department might screen out candidates posting their "beautiful" photos along with an applicatiom that don't involve petty jealously.

If photos are relatively rare in a culture receiving applications or the photos used are glamorous model applications, one could even argue that it's a reasonable alarm about a person's willingness to nakedly milk their looks. Even if that isn't the case, a non-partisan observer might [over]correct a perceived (and often real) tendency for beautiful people to receive more favourable treatment in some environments. Maybe they could apply the same criteria to tall men too...

Tycho|12 years ago

photos aren't terribly relevant now, since you can just google the person's name and find a pic of them in most cases