Your Flaming Skulls Tattoo IS Hurting Your Job Prospects

Skulls
Source: ddmatt31, cc-by3.0, flickr

With precious few exceptions, a couple of centuries ago, tattoos used to be associated with sailors, pirates and convicts. A couple of decades ago they were associated with gangs, bikers and convicts, and they were almost exclusively in men’s domain. The only women with tattoos were those with questionable morals and rough biker chicks – the kind who opened beer bottles with their teeth and wrapped yards of chain around their knuckles before giving someone a beating they’d never forget. These days, your kids’ kindergarten teacher probably has a “tramp” stamp hidden on her lower back and your financial advisor is might just have tribal sleeves down to his elbows.

Body piercings have become nearly as common. In the old days, only circus freaks used to bear dozens of holes in each ear and chains looped through their nipples, and any man with pierced ears was subjected to a slew of homophobic jibes and possible beatings. These days, your surgeon might have four holes in her lobes, a tragus piercing and a belly button ring. Your law lecturer might have stretched earlobes, a nose ring and a tongue piercing.

But, while the public at large has taken to tattoos and piercings in a big way, how do employers feel about them? Are they still taboo in the workplace? Do obvious tattoos affect your employment prospects?

The answers won’t surprise you?

Even though some employers are fairly accepting and open-minded when it comes to tattoos and piercings, the majority still believe that body art in any form presents a negative image. It seems that people with multiple tattoos and piercings are still considered non-conformist rebels living on the fringes of society, just waiting for the chance to take a swing at your head with an axe.

Well, it’s not that bad, but they’re still considered different enough to be bad for business.

Would you like some stats?

In January 2013, Aaron Gouveia, a writer for Salary.com, published an article on the acceptability of tattoos and body piercings in the workplace. He cited statistics from several studies, revealing the prevalence of tattoos to people’s attitudes towards them. For instance, Pew Research Center has found that nearly 40% of 18 – 29-year-olds have at least one tattoo. Salary.com conducted its own survey and found that 12% of the over 2600 respondents have at least one visible tattoo that can be seen by co-workers. Interestingly, body piercings seem to be far less popular, with only 3% of respondents sporting a visible piercing – not the traditional single hole in each ear lobe kind.

A very important finding is that 76% of respondents believe that tattoos and piercings have a negative impact on employment prospects, 42% believe that visible tattoos are inappropriate in the workplace and 39% believe that tattooed staff negatively affect their employers’ public image. The industries with the most tattooed workers include agriculture, hospitality, media, retail and even finance and healthcare – although the numbers for the last few are relatively low.

Michael R. Lewis cites some more interesting stats in his article for Money Crashers. For example, CareerBuilder has found that 60% of employers won’t hire people with tattoos or body piercings – 60%! Tattoos and body piercings are also likely to affect your hiring chances, as many employers say it is the third most common reason for not bumping employees up the corporate ladder.

But know this before you reach for your copy of the constitution to see how this impacts your rights – you don’t have a leg to stand on. While it seems unfair, discriminatory and antediluvian to turn away people because they have body art, employers have the law on their side. Employers are fully within their rights to set reasonable dress codes (including prohibiting or limiting the visibility of tattoos and piercings) and to take action against employees who violate the code. The only exception is when tattoos form part of religious beliefs. Note that forearm tattoos of snakes curled around daggers with bloody venom dripping from their fangs do not denote a religious spirit.

If you’re looking for a job and you do have tattoos, it’s a good idea to find out about the company’s policy beforehand. That way you know two things: 1) whether you really want to work there in the first place, and 2) whether you need to cover your tats for the interview. If you want a tattoo but are worried about your employment prospects, consider getting something relatively small and tasteful (not nearly naked women riding flaming motorcycles with a skill and bones motif), and get it somewhere that can be easily covered up if necessary. A very big no-no is a tattoo on your face. Not even Mike Tyson can pull that off.

Just like some industries are more accepting of tattoos and body piercings, so are some countries. In an article for ABC Illawarra, Caitlin Jinks cite Maree Morgan-Monkan, an HR manager in Wollongong, Australia, who doesn’t believe that tattoos are a problem in the workplace. She says that skills, especially customer service skills and dedication to the job count for more than body art. Although, she does admit that there is still some stigma attached to tattoos, it’s nowhere near what it used to be, and she’s hoping that in the next decade or so it will be gone completely.

Jemima Winslow has 10 tattoos, some visible, some not so much. So far she’s not found them a problem finding employment, but then she works in media, which is one of the more tattoo-tolerant industries around. Being a freelancer also helps.