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Yesterday, a man who runs one of Europe’s most valuable private companies took to Twitter to comment on media coverage of his business.
The report was wrong and trying to fix it was like “shouting into a storm,” said Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who said Klarna’s payments service had seen its prices drop and announced more bankruptcy collections.
This caught my eye because Siemiatkowski is an interesting person ever since I found his funny headshot photo. In it, he somehow manages to do the upright version of the split by standing on his right leg with his unbent left leg up. He looks like a gymnast in a jacket. Or a ballet dancer. Or the letter ‘Y’.
Either way, it’s an impressive display of flexibility, and it earned Simiatkowski first place in last year’s tech startup happiness ranking compiled by news site SiftedTech.
But while his dash of courage is welcome in the rest of the business world, there are unsettling signs that the headshot is being taken more seriously than it should be.
More than a million people update their profile pictures on LinkedIn every week, the site says, and the hunger for the perfect headshot is growing, with people paying more than $1,000 for such photos.
Typical prices are low, says Doren Gabriel, founder of London-based Digi Corporate Studios, with individual head sizes starting at £99. But partly due to pandemic demand and partly due to the speed with which the business world is moving online, the business is proving to be booming.
Companies that interact with customers through chatbots and online forms rather than people on the phone want their human employees to be more visible than ever, he said. Many companies also want to demonstrate their inclusivity and diversity. The result: once “hidden and invisible” employees are now visible on company websites. Some organizations now use mass shootings as team building events.
Thankfully, the headshot is less gray and staid than before. Another London photographer told me that 90 percent of men now go non-stop. The remaining 10 percent are bankers, senior insurance executives and the lawyers who support them.
But the search for photographic perfection can be justified. A friend of mine told me last week that her hairdresser was seeing her clients as they were about to be photographed for the Labor Building Pass.
This is unfortunate. But as someone whose day job requires a byline headshot, I can say that a poor photo poses a career threat.
“I was going to promote your column on page one,” an editor once told me. “But your head shot is so bad I decided not to.” This was cruel news but alas, it was justified. I arranged to get a new photo, which brought another concern.
Should one follow the advice of the Internet to lift a “smiling” (smiling eye) or “squanch” (slightly darkened or lower eyelid)? Or better yet, opt for the eye-puckering “Duchenne’s smile,” named after the French neurologist who discovered the source of a truly happy smile.
Duchenne is the “gold standard of facial expressions” in Western culture, two former LinkedIn employees wrote in their book. Attached., a guide to job search success. Cautious expressions seem “less accurate,” they warn.
This is bad news for people like me, who lose their eyesight due to Duchenne. Another Duchene hunter, my FT colleague Stephen Bush, rightly adds that a smiling online headshot is no more appropriate than a column on world poverty. Also, he says, “When I smile, it feels like something has hit me.”
Ultimately, headshots, like most of life, shouldn’t be bound by too many rules or taken too seriously. Also, context matters.
“I want to look like a shark with a dead eye,” said a headshot client to London photographer Mark Gray. Gray obliges, negotiating the release of hostages from pirates in the Indian Ocean, especially after the client reveals what he does for a living.
pilita.clark@ft.com
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