Today’s job market is perhaps more competitive than ever. With the advent of AI candidate screening technology, on-line resumes have to be finely tuned if they have any chance of attracting a potential employer. Case in point: Joey Hack, a coder living in North City, was getting nowhere with the thousands of e-resumes he was sending out. That was until he discovered that part of the screening process was evaluating his profile picture. Hack found out that the screening software wasn’t even registering his profile picture as part of his presentation.

“Apparently, I found out, the screening software in “IT Coder Mode” doesn’t even recognize a figure as a human male if it doesn’t have a pony tail and tattoos. I also made the mistake of combing my hair before taking my profile shot and that really confused the software. Turns out that well-kept hair on a male was not even in the algorithm. Anything other than a ponytail was hardly registering at all.

Joey knew it was time for an upgrade his profile picture.

“I started with adding in needless facial hair and a couple of ponytails. I also added a few tats for good measure. Lastly, I realized that I had made the mistake being photographed not wearing worn-out sweatpants and a black t-shirt with a metal band logo on it. To fix this, I reshot my profile picture wearing more appropriate clothes like a Metallica t-shirt (being careful to not to feature anything from after the “Ride the Lightening“ album)”

After making these changes and submitting my e-resume again, I got several interview requests almost immediately. For the in-person interview I didn’t want to leave anything to chance so I didn’t shower for several days and wore open-toed footware or Crocs. This new strategy has worked so well that I now have several job offers pending.

“I even went so far as to try to develop coder social skills like finding ways to inject my views on Crypto into every conversation.”

“My sister asked me recently if I was concerned that I may be found out as a fraud when people actually have to work with me? What happens if I accidentally use deodorant or shave or something? I told her that it is going to be like the movie Mrs. Doubtfire for a while for sure. Maybe I can gradually transition back by eventually shaving my neck beard or only wearing shorts in the summer.”