Thanks for the replies everyone, good to hear some reasoned and differing views on this topic.
This basically echoes my feelings. I don’t really ever want to work anywhere where the senior members of staff would think that the decision to get a tattoo affects my skillset. That’s not to say that I don’t understand that some employers do have policies on these matters, for whatever reasons, but I would definitely feel uncomfortable working with/for an individual who decided that having a visible tattoo all of a sudden means that I can’t sketch as well.
@ Architorture - I hope that mine fall into the tasteful category, but I definitely see your point. A socially questionable phrase plastered across the knuckles makes someone come across entirely differently than someone with a small pattern on one finger.
I completely agree with the above. If I get turned down for a job because of it, it’s a life lesson in how the world sometimes doesn’t work in the way everyone believes it should. I think it’s important that if I am to do this, I’m fully aware of the potential outcomes later in life, and accept them.
Thanks Michael, it’s good to hear this from someone in a ‘hiring’ position of seniority. What I take away from this is that if I went for an interview at consultancy X, whose work I really admired, but the rejection came back with the main reason cited as “we don’t allow visible tattoos”, would I really want to work for them anyway? I appreciate a company’s right to impose these rules, but I don’t think our employer/employee relationship would exactly “click”.
Interesting to hear someone happy to have everything on show and let the client make their own mind up, how does it generally go? Have you ever lost a client because of it? (That you know of?)
Having said all of the above, I would never want something like this to jeopardise winning a new client at any employer, let alone my current one. If I do get this done, I will likely be wearing a plaster (band-aid for the Americans on here) over my finger for all new client meetings just in case.
Thinking of our current clients off of the top of my head now, I expect 99% of them would be fine with it if the next time they came into the office I had a visible tattoo because of the rapport and trust I’ve built with them, and the fact that they know I can deliver their work. However, quite what percentage of them would have decided to use us over another consultancy if in the first meeting they saw a visible tattoo, I couldn’t say. I’m not about to bite the hand that feeds me so as a precautionary measure I will likely cover it up in new client meetings.