Including a photo on your resume

 Does it help, or does it hurt? 

Today's resume comes to us from a project manager in the land development sector.

This resume brings up the following questions: 

Does including a photo of yourself on your resume make it more personable and harder to say no? Does it make people want to inquire more?

I took these questions to the experts to see what they had to say. Below are the responses I received from experts in their respective fields.

 

"On a resume, besides from being a potential source for discrimination and perceived conceptions, it is just distracting. Recruiters typically spend less than 15 seconds looking at a resume, a picture can decrease that time (i.e. when I'm looking at the picture, I'm not learning anything about you - the total exposure is still only 15 seconds.) "

- Frank Goovaerts, Director of Student Career Success

"When I see photos on resumes, especially of engineers, it rarely works out in the engineer’s favor. I have subconscious reactions to the way people look, and usually it isn't a good thing. It comes off as a little weird to me."

- Drew Felker, CEO/ COO/Principal Engineer

"I don't recommend using a photo on a resume unless it is relevant to the occupation. Acting resumes, yes. Environmental resumes, no."

- Jessica Hanchey, Lead Executive Recruiter

"The common thought these day is NOT to add your photo as this can lead to discrimination: age, race, gender, etc."

- Cathy MacKinney, HR Coordinator III