CV photo in the UK: leave it off unless someone asks

The short answer for UK applications

If you are applying for a job in the UK, leave the photo off. The University of Kent careers service says that UK CVs do not tend to include a photograph. St Andrews tells applicants to leave it off unless one is requested. The academic jobs site jobs.ac.uk advises against it outside work where your face is part of the job, and warns that some employers may ignore a CV with information that could be seen as discriminatory.

The job boards agree. Totaljobs, in its first-job CV guide, tells applicants to avoid unnecessary details such as a full address or a photo. CV-Library lists the photograph among the personal details never to include, because it takes up space, adds nothing about how well you perform and can open the recruiter up to unconscious bias.

Nobody will stop you from attaching a picture. The point is that the reader gains nothing from it, while the employer gains something to worry about.

Seven situations, seven answers

The answer depends on who reads the CV and what they asked for. The last column names the source.

What the people who read CVs say

CV-Library reports that 25.8 per cent of the recruiters in its research named a photo as the most irrelevant thing to add to a CV. The page we read gives no sample size, so treat the number as an indication and not as a measurement.

Forum threads put it in plainer words. In r/AskUK, a thread asking whether to put a photo on a CV drew the answer that it would set you apart for the wrong reasons, and that HR would probably remove it before the CV reached the hiring manager. We found no source confirming that HR does this as a rule. In another r/AskUK thread, people who read many CVs called headshots rare in the UK and said they bring bias into the decision. A reply in a Student Room thread on graduate applications says nothing forbids a photo, but that it is unusual on an academic CV.

A minority view exists. In the first thread, some commenters argued that an applicant who expects to be turned down because of how they look might prefer to find out early. That worry is real, and no careers page makes it go away.

Why the convention exists

Section 39 of the Equality Act 2010 says that an employer must not discriminate against a person in the arrangements it makes for deciding whom to offer employment. The text does not mention photographs. The careers advice is about what a photograph shows at a glance, such as age, sex or ethnicity: Kent lists age, gender, race, religion, marital status and disability among the details to keep off the CV.

What to put at the top of the CV instead

Use the space for details a recruiter can act on. Kent's advice is to give your name, phone number and email address. A town or city is enough for location, and a link to your LinkedIn profile is a sensible addition because LinkedIn is where a portrait belongs. CV-Library says the same in its guide to using LinkedIn alongside a CV: you should not add a photo to the CV, yet one is somewhat expected on a LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn's profile help page says members with a profile photo receive up to twice as many profile views, while a LinkedIn recruiting blog post from August 2024 says 14 times. The two pages disagree, so read it as a sign that a photo helps people notice a profile and not as a multiplier you can expect. The upload help allows 400 × 400 to 7680 × 4320 pixels, at most 8 MB, as PNG or JPG.

If an employer does ask for a photo

Sometimes an application form includes a photo field. Follow the instructions on size and format first, because the employer's form is the only specification that counts. Where it says nothing, a plain head-and-shoulders portrait that looks like you today is the safe choice.

The clearest UK guidance on how real the photo should look comes from the acting world. Spotlight, the casting platform, tells actors to edit only by cropping, removing red-eye and, rarely, adjusting brightness, because they need to look like their photo. The same discipline suits a CV photo.

Where an AI portrait fits and where it does not

Profilfoto KI builds a photorealistic portrait from your own selfies in the style you choose, such as business or LinkedIn, and no studio appointment is involved. The first photo is free and carries a watermark, so you can judge the likeness before paying anything. After that the packages are one-off payments with no subscription: 2 photos for €4.99, 12 for €29 and 40 for €79. Creation usually takes three to five minutes. Uploaded selfies are stored in Frankfurt and deleted automatically after 90 days at the latest. The payment page is in German or English, and the privacy policy is available in English on our privacy page.

For a UK job search the better use is LinkedIn, not the CV. A portrait made from your own selfies can give you a clean, evenly lit profile photo without a studio visit. Totaljobs advises against filters on a LinkedIn photo so that the image feels authentic, and the same test applies here: choose a result that looks like you on a normal workday. We would not attach it to a CV for an ordinary UK application, for the reasons above, and we would not suggest it for a role in which the employer expects an unretouched photo of you. It is not a passport or other official photo, and it makes no promise about how an application will go.