I have just one tattoo, strategically placed in a discreet location – a veiled spot where it can't impose any career-related harm. And yet shortly after I was inked, I wrote an article on whether brains are important in leadership, and was surprised by a commenter who felt compelled to write the following: "I saw your ugly new tattoo. That wasn't very brainy of you, was it?"
The moderator promptly deleted the comment, but not before I had spent a weekend trying to figure out how the clandestine location had been exposed. Not that it mattered. Judgment had already set in.
That level of judgment also occurs in reverse. A friend of mine recently spent several months' job hunting. She blacklisted all corporate employers for the entire period because of the subtle but nonetheless visible tattoos on her wrists. Since she was convinced she'd be judged harshly in an interview the moment a recruiter spotted them, she refused to go to the trouble of even applying.
Which, to be fair on decision makers in the corporate world, was clearly an overreaction. Some of the most successful businesspeople I know make no attempt to disguise their body art.
According to a poll of 1000 Australians last year by McCrindle Research, one in five of us has at least one tattoo. And in a break with conventional wisdom, fresh research published in the esteemed Human Relations journal indicates that, in some cases, branding yourself may actually be good for your career.
The researcher who did the study drew on prior research that demonstrated consumers are less likely to buy from tattooed salespeople, and that tattooed women are perceived more negatively than tattooed men during customer service interactions.
In his experiment, he asked 192 participants to imagine they were recruiters hiring employees for jobs in a fine dining restaurant and, alternatively, in a nightclub. They were shown the headshots of potential applicants, some of whom had a small tattoo and some of whom did not.
You can probably predict the results: "The presence of a tattoo is a significant liability in the context of the fine dining restaurant and a significant asset in the context of the nightclub … In other words, the presence of a tattoo increases one's chances of employment in the nightclub and decreases one's chances of employment in the fine dining restaurant."
OK, so nothing earth-shattering there. The more intriguing findings of his research emerged in the second part of the study. He engaged the participation of two small businesses at which he interviewed the employer, a tattooed employee from each business, and their customers.
The employers – a skateboarding store and a pub – spoke favourably of tattooed employees, remarking there's a need to "encourage individuality and creativity for every single individual who works for us". They even go so far as this: "Some of our staff incentives are things like paying for a custom-designed tattoo."
The customers, too, were unanimously positive about being served by tattooed people. "He probably knows what he's talking about," said one customer about a skateboarding employee, echoing sentiments by others who felt tattoos enhance credibility when they reflect the community that frequents the premises.
So what's the lesson to be drawn from this research? If you're thinking tattooed individuals should simply be judicious with where they choose to apply for work, it's worth reconsidering that position. I agree with the researcher when he concludes that "the ideal to which we should strive, as a society, is one of inclusiveness and the rejection of stereotypes in the labour market".
Some of the most successful businesspeople I know make no attempt to disguise their body art.
He adds: "It is also important for organisations to guard against unconscious bias in recruitment and selection. This might be relevant, for example, where an older manager who is perhaps personally antagonistic towards body art is hiring for a customer-facing position where body art is an asset from the point of view of the consumer base."
Especially when tattoos across almost all consumer bases are now more prevalent than ever before.
James Adonis is the author of How To Be Great. Follow MySmallBusiness on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
0 comments
New User? Sign up