Can getting a tattoo hurt your career?
12 August 2006CareerJournal has an article on the potential downsides of tattoos in the workplace. They point out that it’s increasingly common:
About one in four people have tattoos and 14% have body piercings, according to a study of 500 people published in the June 7 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. Tattooing was equally common for men and women, while women were more likely to have body piercing.
The old conventional wisdom used to be that having a tattoo at all would kill your entire career. But the new wisdom seems to be that it’s not a big deal:
Employer reactions vary widely, said Amy Maingault, information specialist for SHRM, a trade group of 200,000 human-resource professionals in Alexandria, Va. While many have lightened up about the presence of visible “tats,” others may take a conservative stance, especially if the job involves a lot of customer contact, she said.
Still, the market for high-turnover jobs such as baggers and checkers in retail and hospitality can force employers to be more flexible, Maingault said.
“Your front-line employees can be very difficult to recruit,” she said. “The job market has put pressure on employers where they simply can’t eliminate candidates based on [the presence of tattoos] because there aren’t enough candidates to go around. Should the job market change, I could see employers getting more picky about things like that.”
I’d be a little more cautious than that. Frankly, I can’t recommend getting a tattoo on any part of your body that can’t be easily covered up with normal work clothing. If you have to wear a turtleneck every day to work because you tattoo up your neck, it’s going to start to look weird. And it’s a reality that you’re going to have trouble making a good impression on some people if you have weird tattoos in weird places. The business world is a conservative, conforming place. It’s great that you want to show how unique and independent you are by drawing stuff on yourself. But your boss may not see it the same way. They review TPS reports all day, they don’t want to see someone rocking the boat by thinking differently.
If you don’t have ambitions to work in the corporate world, then cut loose and tattoo away. If you think you ever might want to be in an office environment, though, I’d be a little more restrained. In all seriousness, you can probably find lots of people and lots of companies that won’t care. But on the other hand, all it takes is one: one guy in an interview to decide he won’t hire you because of the tattoo. One boss to decide you’re the office weirdo who won’t get with the program. And that one person, depending on your luck and depending on who it is, can have a negative effect on your entire career. So stick to parts of your body that will stay hidden even on casual Friday.
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