The honest answer: it depends heavily on where you are applying
In the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, including a photo on your resume is uncommon and often actively discouraged. Many companies in these countries prefer resumes without photos to reduce the risk of unconscious bias during screening, and some large employers will remove or ignore photos entirely as a matter of internal policy before a resume even reaches a hiring manager for review. In much of continental Europe, parts of Asia, and the Middle East, a professional photo is standard practice and its absence can actually look unusual or incomplete to a local recruiter reviewing applications in that market.
This is one of the clearest cases where global advice does not exist, and the right choice depends entirely on the norms of the specific country and company you are applying to, not on any universal best practice that applies everywhere in the world equally.
Why US, UK, Canadian, and Australian employers tend to avoid photos
Anti-discrimination norms, and in some cases direct legal exposure around hiring bias, push companies in these countries to standardize on photo-free resumes across the board rather than leaving the decision to individual recruiter judgment. A recruiter who sees a candidate's photo before evaluating their qualifications can be influenced by appearance, perceived age, race, or other protected characteristics, even completely unintentionally and without any conscious awareness of the bias happening, so many organizations remove this variable from the process entirely by policy.
When a photo is expected or standard
In countries like Germany, France, parts of Eastern Europe, and several Asian markets, a resume photo is a longstanding norm and its absence may genuinely read as an incomplete or unusual application to a local hiring manager used to seeing one on every application that crosses their desk. If you are applying internationally, take the time to research the norm for that specific country rather than assuming your home market's convention applies everywhere you happen to send an application.
A safe practical rule
When in doubt, or when applying to a multinational company through a global careers portal that could route your resume to any regional office anywhere in the world, leave the photo off by default. It is easy for a candidate to add a photo later if a specific market or recruiter expects one, but it is much harder to undo the first impression a photo has already created once it has been seen and processed by the reader. If you do decide to include one, use a simple, professional headshot with a neutral background and appropriate business attire, not a casual or cropped social media photo pulled from somewhere else entirely.
Other personal details that follow the same logic
The photo question is really one instance of a broader pattern: personal details like marital status, date of birth, or a national identification number are expected on formal applications in some countries and considered inappropriate or even legally risky to include in others. Apply the same research-first approach to any personal detail beyond your name and contact information before adding it to a resume headed to an unfamiliar market, rather than assuming the norm you grew up with applies universally to every employer you might ever apply to.
Getting the photo itself right when you do include one
If your market or target employer expects a photo, treat it with the same care as any other part of the resume. A recent, well-lit headshot taken specifically for professional use, cropped to head and shoulders, with a plain or softly blurred background, communicates far more competence than a photo cropped awkwardly from a group picture or taken in casual clothing. Dress the way you would for an interview at that company, keep your expression natural and approachable rather than overly stiff, and update the photo every few years so it stays a reasonably accurate representation of how you currently look, since a photo that looks noticeably outdated can create its own small credibility question during an eventual interview.
When research does not give you a clear answer
If you cannot find a clear norm for a specific company or country, a short, polite question to a recruiter or contact at the company, if you have one, is a perfectly reasonable way to resolve the uncertainty rather than guessing. Framing it simply, asking whether a photo is expected on applications for that market, comes across as thoughtful rather than naive. In the complete absence of any way to ask, defaulting to no photo remains the lower-risk choice in most cases, since a missing photo rarely counts against a candidate even in markets where it is common, while an unexpected or poorly chosen photo can occasionally work against you in markets where it is not.
How the photo question interacts with fully online application systems
Many large companies now run every application through a standardized online portal regardless of which country the role is based in, and these portals sometimes simply have no field for a photo at all, which quietly resolves the question for you in that specific case. Where a portal does allow an optional photo upload, treat the presence of that option as a genuine choice rather than an implicit expectation, and fall back on the regional research described above to decide whether uploading one actually helps your specific application or simply introduces a variable that was better left out entirely.
When a field is marked optional, it genuinely is optional, and leaving it blank rarely counts against you in a system built to standardize applications across many different countries and norms at once, since the entire point of a standardized global portal is to treat every applicant through the same consistent process regardless of where they happen to be applying from, which is precisely the kind of neutral, low-risk default this whole guide has been building toward.