[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

I’m putting together my one page resume to give to campus recruiters for an audit position in public accounting this fall, and I was wondering if anybody had an opinion on whether I should put a picture on it? I’m using the same picture for my LinkedIn account. I designed the resume myself based off some templates I found online, and included the picture as it seems to be something of a new trend.

Also, I received my NTS and scheduled my first exam for November. I’m working part-time in a non-accounting field and this will be a career change for me so I’m using the headline “graduate accounting student and CPA candidate”.

Any thoughts?

[Missy]

Personally I'd find it odd to receive a resume with a picture on it. May well be a new trend to do it, but I don't think its one that's been embraced by HR people yet.

Licensed Massachusetts Non Reporting CPA since 2012
Finance/Admin/HR Manager

[Radez]

I would think recruiters would not want to see a picture on a resume, simply because of the possibility of either activating unconscious biases or introducing the possibility for additional bias into the recruiting process. A picture isn't, or shouldn't be, relevant to the hiring decision.

[mafalo1989]

I've actually received really good feedback from using a more up to date and trendy resume. I didn't include a picture but I did use color and instead of using sentences to explain what I was good at I used bars and ranked myself, for example I had on my resume that I am proficient in excel and I have moderate-high experience in Quickbooks, instead of writing that out made a bar titled Microsoft Excel and filled it all the way up and a bar titled Quickbooks and filled it mostly full. I received TONS of phone calls and TONS of compliments on it. I was actually told by at least 3 or 4 recruiters that they loved that I used the bars because it was a quick way for them to see how I judged my skills and they didn't have to read. It made their job quicker and that's what got me in the door. It doesn't hurt and it makes you stand out and look creative among the candidates that send in a plain Jane boring resume. You also have to think about it from a recruiters point of view, typically the recruiter is not an accountant, they most likely know nothing about accounting. It's about getting their attention, if your resume looks different it will grab their attention and force them to pay better attention to your skills and qualities you offer. If it were a professional picture and you look 10/10 your best and you're planning on showing up to the interview looking 10/10 your best go ahead and do it. If you want to use color I'd suggest using the colors that your company uses for their logo or on their website, that will really get their attention and show that you at least did a little research. There is a tool online, I can't remember the website but you can pull the colors off of a website and it tells you the little code thing to type into the Word formatting when choosing font colors and border colors and all that. My basic resume was in a dark green font and then if I wanted to fancy it up some more I'd go creep on the companies website and use the color capture tool and change the colors to match theirs. Recruiters might not recognize it up front but they'll understand it subconsciously. The biggest thing about a resume is not the content of it, that's a good part of it but the biggest thing is the ability to capture the audiences attention. If you've got to peacock a little there's nothing wrong with that.

[rlarivee01]

They require that in a lot of cases in China. Make your own jokes as to why.

I wouldn't do it here though.

[Author]

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