For a job in Canada or the United States, the default answer is no, and it is one of the few resume questions where the convention is clear enough to state plainly. The reasoning is worth understanding, though, because it also tells you which exceptions are real.
Why the convention runs against it
Two reasons, and the first is about the employer rather than you. A photo introduces visible characteristics into a screening decision that is supposed to turn on your experience, and that creates a discrimination exposure the employer did not ask for. Some organisations handle this by discarding resumes with photos, or by stripping the image before a hiring manager sees the file. Either way the photo has done nothing for you and may have cost you the read.
The second reason is simpler. In North American hiring a photo is unusual, and unusual reads as unfamiliar with the convention. That is a small signal and it is not one you want to spend anything on.
The mechanical cost
A parser extracts text. An image contributes no characters, so a photo is space on the page that returns nothing to the machine reading it, and it pushes the content that does matter further down. The worse version is when adding a photo tempts you into a design tool and you export an image-only PDF, which has no extractable text at all. That is the single most damaging formatting mistake there is, and a photo is a common route into it.
The real exceptions
- Acting, modelling, performance and on-camera work, where appearance is part of the job specification. Even there the headshot usually travels as its own file or portfolio rather than embedded in the resume.
- When the posting or the application form explicitly asks for one. Follow the instruction.
- When you are applying outside North America. A photo is conventional or expected in parts of Europe and Asia, so check the practice in the country you are applying to rather than exporting the North American default.
Honest limits
This is a convention, not a law, and conventions are softer than the confident tone of most advice about them suggests. We have not found a rigorous survey of how recruiters actually treat resumes with photos, and the widely repeated claims about instant rejection are assertions rather than measurements. What is solid is the direction: the upside is cosmetic, the downside is real but unquantified, and the mechanical cost is certain. That asymmetry is the whole argument.
What to do with the space instead
Put a line of contact details in the body of the document near the top, including a link to your professional profile. A recruiter who wants to see your face will click it, which gets you the only genuine benefit of a photo without any of the cost. Then give the reclaimed space to a short summary that says what you do and what you are aiming at, which is the thing a first pass is actually looking for.