Q: Last week you provided some job-hunting tips for soon-to-be graduates. This made me think about all the young people who have tattoos these days, and whether this affects their employment chances in any way. Does it?
A: Yes. It absolutely negatively affects their employability. Of course if your tattoos aren’t visible, they are irrelevant. However if they’re easy to see such as neck or hand tattoos, they can certainly hurt your job prospects.
In fact, according to a 2012 study conducted by the website The Patient’s Guide, the number 1 reason people gave for undergoing procedures to remove their tattoos was for “employment reasons”. In fact, 40% of respondents cited this reason, up sharply from 25% the year before. The study appears to support what many of us have known anecdotally: A visible tattoo can cost you a job offer.
In many industries –be it retail, medical, financial, even hospitality- someone interviewing with a tattoo sticking out of a shirt collar is not going to make a favorable impression.
Whether college students get tattoos for inane reasons such body art decoration or as a badge of youthful rebellion, most customers and the general public (fairly or not) still make negative associations and prejudgments about tattoos. This generalization even extends to the armed forces, who have explicit rules regarding which visible tattoos could disqualify a potential recruit.
My advice to any young person considering a tattoo is to avoid any area that is not normally covered by work clothes. That still leaves you with plenty of skin to ink over.
It’s worth noting that people who chose to remove their visible tattoos for “employment reasons” where not only those that were job-hunting; some cited a career change, getting passed over for promotion, or lack of approval from current employers or peers.
In spite of the cultural popularity of tattoos in the last couple of decades –a popularity not diminishing anytime soon- tattoos have not yet made significant inroads of acceptability in the business world. That may change some day, when the generation we now refer to as Millenials, are in charge. Until then, think before you ink.
© Copyright Eva Del Rio
