I have a picture of myself here. If you’re e.g. a recruiter and are using it as part of an unconscious evaluation process, there’s no need for you to proceed. I have a resume somewhere and a linkedin probably, otherwise email me, thanks!
Actually, causal inference gives us a way to formalize this: $Y$ is some evaluation of my future competence, $S$ is skills + experience + whatever else “legitimate” factors, and $A$ is personal appearance (does a moustache really make me smarter?). Then we want $E[Y|S,A] = E[Y|S]$ meaning your model’s opinion of my comptetence (in mean) isn’t influenced by my appearance when already taking legit factors into account.
Interestingly, if we “residualize”, taking $Y~$=$Y−E[Y∣S]$ and $A~=A−E[A∣S]$, we can ask competence and appearance to be noncorrelated, $Cov(Y~,A~)=0$ which means we win, right?? Email me if you spot what’s wrong here.