Body Art and Oil, Gas: Are Your Tattoos Keeping You From a Job?
Degreed? Check. Experienced? Check. Great attitude? Check. Tattooed? Not so fast.
While a job candidate may have all the credentials necessary to do the work and the potential to do it well, body decorations in the form of tattoos could still be a deterrent for some hiring managers.
According to a 2013 Salary.com survey of nearly 2,700 people, 76 percent of respondents said tattoos and piercings hurt an applicant’s chance of getting hired during a job interview. Further, 42 percent feel visible tattoos are always inappropriate at work and 39 percent believe employees with tattoos and piercings reflect poorly on their employers.
Ouch.
Rigzone set out to find what attitudes about tattoos are like today and how that affects the many oil and gas professionals looking for jobs.
Prevalence in the Industry
While entertainers and athletes rarely have to worry about losing their jobs due to their tattoos, the majority of the world’s workforce can’t take such liberties. The same Salary.com survey found that just 9 percent of respondents who work in energy and utilities have tattoos.
“In the energy sector, candidates with tattoos may have a bit more trouble winning over their boss or hiring manager. Tattoos are more accepted and prevalent in creative industries and the energy sector is a hard science application,” Valerie Streif, senior advisor at The Mentat, an organization with decades of experience in hiring, managing and mentoring job candidates, told Rigzone.
Those applying to work offshore where they’ll spend the majority of their time on oil rigs probably won’t be judged as harshly if they have visible tattoos, but candidates who desire to work onshore or in an office environment encounter a different set of rules.
On a Reddit comment thread asking engineers with visible tattoos how tattoos have affected their job experience, one poster admitted to having an upper arm tattoo that he “consciously decided to wait on getting” until after he left his oil and gas job in Houston. He was an automations programmer who mostly worked in the office, and only went into the field for installations.
Another commenter made the point “sometimes it isn’t the presence of tattoos that is the problem, but the content of them. If you have obscene or graphic tattoos, it makes sense to cover them up no matter what job you have.”
“Is it my Tattoos?”
Some workers who have been employed at the same company for years may begin seeking advancement opportunities. If your tattoos didn’t keep you from getting the job, should they factor in to whether or not you get a promotion?
It can be a tricky question to answer.
Denise Noble, senior HR consultant for The HR Engineers, suggests workers watch others in the company who are in positions that they desire. If they don’t have visible tattoos, that may be a point to consider.
“If all of your performance evaluations are good and there’s no markdown on appearance, it might be best to ask if your tattoos are holding you back from being promoted,” Noble, who has 20 years of HR experience, told Rigzone. “Phrase it by saying, ‘I’m really interested in moving to the next level. What would it take for me to get there?’”
This should be a one-on-one conversation with your immediate supervisor, she said.
“And if all else fails, it may be necessary to take the bull by the horns and ask, ‘is it my tattoos?’”
Generational Differences
Age also plays a significant factor in attitudes toward tattoos in the workplace.
Appearance can overtake an interview, including a candidate’s credentials, said Dr. David L. Mason, organizational development consultant and director of data science, for DecisionWise, an organizational development consulting firm.
Mason said tattoos aren’t necessarily a bad thing; it simply depends on with whom you’re interviewing.
“If the interviewer is a more conservative person looking for [a particular appearance], then it’s a bad thing,” Mason told Rigzone. “If you’re talking to someone who also has tattoos, then it’s a great point of connection.”
He said tattoos are becoming more mainstream, compared to the older generation – todays’ CEOs – who grew up with tattoos representing a seedy, rebellious element of a person.
While there’s no cut and dry policy for every company, the truth of the matter is unless a job candidate or worker can prove they were unfairly discriminated against based on their tattoo (i.e. the animosity from the tattoo stems from a religious, racial or ethnic bias), there’s not much legally that job candidate can do.
“For example, a Native American may have a tattoo as part of their religion … that could be a challenge for [an employer] to deny that person a job,” Sidd Rao, associate at Shellist Lazarz Slobin LLP, a Houston-based boutique law firm focused on employment law, told Rigzone. “An employee needs a legitimate reason to justify a claim for illegal discrimination.”
What may be in the best interest of employers, as a general rule of thumb, is to have a dress code policy that calls for a neutral professional attire and well-groomed appearance.
“Interviews in general are poor science; there’s only one interaction sample size, so employers stretch subconsciously to find any information that they can,” Mason said. “Most of the time, that information comes from the appearance of the candidate.”
Noble said in a job interview, an older candidate probably wouldn’t be able to get away with some things a younger candidate would – like visible tattoos.
“If we’re talking something tasteful, such as a small rose tattoo on the forearm or ankle, on a 20-something candidate, many hiring managers wouldn’t bat an eyelash,” she said. “Seeing that same tattoo on somebody in their 40s or 50s would be different.”
This is part of humans’ cognitive bias, Noble said, referring to the inferences people make about others based on their own subjective reality. In this instance, it’s a form of stereotyping.
“Visible tattoos on older generations may be perceived as more rebellious, whereas in younger generations, they’re seen more as artistic,” she said. “That said, some people with edgier tattoos, on their face for example – that doesn’t go well in corporate. It becomes a question of rebellious expression or artistic expression.”
Streif shared a similar sentiment.
“Being heavily tattooed on visible places such as the face, neck and hands can absolutely affect a worker’s promotion or hiring. It also depends on what the tattoo is,” said Streif. “Complex, beautifully done tattoos can be seen as artistic expression and will win over more stubborn, conservative bosses before sloppy, prison-style ink will.”
Still, Streif believes that the taboo surrounding tattoos has faded in recent years.
“Older generation employers and hiring managers have become more accustomed to seeing body modifications and ink on their employees and prospective job candidates,” she said. “People are learning to look beyond superficial skin markings and evaluate employees’ work ethic separate from their body art, and typically now the best qualified candidate for the job will not be passed over due to their appearance.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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