Does/Did your looks affect your job???

Hey everyone....I wanted to post this and see if some of you in SG land have been through this before. Please comment as I would like to get several opinions on this....

I am about to graduate college soon and head out into the working world as a career guy. Me and my current boss were talking today about the fact that the way I look and dress may affect me landing a great job in my field. I am going into digital media production by the way (i.e. web and media design mainly). I dress pretty casual and nothing way out of the ordinary really. Jeans, hardcore band T-shirts, etc. I have several piercings and several tattoos, a few which are visible on my arms and more are in the works.

I am just curious to know if any of you out there have had problems getting jobs in your field simply because of your looks? I mean I honestly think that if you can do the job and do it well, looks should not matter as long as you are not in a super high priority position. Any of you have any stories or ideas to share about this?

It only takes one high up to make who you are an issue in any job.

I work in the HVAC field and have the following effect me.

My arm tats which I get told over and over again I need to wear a long sleeve shirt even if it is 120 outside. I do wear them around customers but when working I do not.

My septum ring I just put up when working but some of it still shows if people are shorter than me or I look up and they happen to be staring at my nose.

I would like to have my abe lincoln beard but due to working for a PA union shop and being a member of NJ union they make me follow the no facial hair policy of the PA apprentice program. This pisses me off since I was in a jr high class to repair the a/c the other day and all the kids were asking each other in whispered tones if I was a student and what was I doing there.

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The field you are looking to go into is probably more forgiving of such things. I for one never imagined a service field would be so back asswards.

fundamentally speaking, if you can do the job well, looks shouldn't matter. however, appearances reflect more than just you when you become part of a community (a company).

so if you apply for a highly conservative company, chances are that studs and wil tattoos will only have negative impact on the prospects of you gettin' the job. chances are that they will ask you about your body mods and whether you'd consider not wearin' them to work.

on the other hand, the career field you're goin into is a community that sorta revolves around our generation. tatoos, hair coloring, piercings and tattoos; it's not taboo like it was some time ago.

i interned for a publishing firm last summer, and looks [similiar to your looks] were the norm. jeans, band tshirt, sandals, tattoos. psh. nothing wrong with it.

so it really comes down to the company you work for. ideally, large scale companies may have policies which may require you to... "muffle" your appearances (tattoos and piercings) if you wish to be part of their community. whereas smaller companies may not give a damn, if not welcome it with open arms.

just my two cents.

i had purple hair for a little while a couple months ago, but i wasn't even out of college when i got hired full time as a multimedia developer. awesome, fun job, but in a very corporate, business-like environment. i was interning there at the time - was part of how i got the job interview in the first place - and the funniest part was that the day i walked in to my internship with my newly-bright-purple hair just so happened to be the same day my supervisor informed me that i'd gotten the job.

one awkward conversation later and i was trying to figure out whether i *could* get the purple out of my hair, regardless of whether or not i wanted to...

i've been working full-time at this place for maybe a month now, and even though it's a great job i do wish i could still play with hair colors and such - that purple had been my first hair dying ever. i figure i'll just have to catch up on it a few years from now...

edited to say - but yeah, pops is right, a company's image is largely made up of the images of the people working for it, so it's understandable that they'd want to exert some influence over that. is too bad that it makes things less fun sometimes. perhaps in time some of these various body mods will become more widely accepted - hey, it could happen.

[Edited on May 27, 2004 by Aubli]

Cool, thanks for the replies so far.

One thing I did notice was that my field of work does seem to be much more forgiving than other fields that I have previously looked into. I am in Atlanta also which I know will play a big part of it. People with lots of ink and piercings and stuff are much more in the norm. around here than where I am from which is SC.

I am not really sweating it that much, I just wanted to see if others out there face the problem and hear some other sides of the story. I am looking forward to getting out there and getting my feet wet and living it up!

I got a job as a personal assistant to the vice president of a marketing firm with purple and green hair. My resumé impressed her i guess. She was very ummmm
kinda of a stuck up sticky beak. I think I was the only person in the company with colored hair and tattoos.

Sometimes, if you can back up the fact that you are the shit, you can get the job regardless of looks.

I was hired with facial piercings and the beginnings of full sleeves.

It depends on the job though.

Just realize that you getting visible tattoos or piercings can affect you getting the job you really want.

I agree with sakita, I used to work in an office and dressed in 'business casual' clothing for almost two years. No one said a word about my tattoos or piercings.

It depends on the company and the person incharge of hiring.

thank heavens i'm self employed for my major job, and the others are bartending and bouncing in clubs that cater to the " alternative- subculture" crowd. the only people i have to worry about with the way i choose to look are my customers. and if they are more comcerned with the way i look than how i do my job, or the quality of the product i provide, then i don't want them as customers in the first place.

maybe if you got some cool "digital media"-ish tats they'd see you were really into it the work

my orca tatoo got me a summer internship at sea world

I am a scientist by profession. at my last job,I got a hard time for my tattoos. the best job ever, as in the one i have now, people ask me why don't i have any more each time someone new notices them. people are more open minded at this particular place. I chose to keep them to myself for a while with long sleeves and let people know me before they can judge. and when I did show them accidentally one day, no one cared. so i don't bother hiding them. some of the secretarty girls in the front office look at me like they are smelling onions and then they talk to me and don't care. I dress casual because with all the hair dyes and bleaches i make, clothes get ruined and we are directed not to wear good clothes. it is only suggested to wear something nice when a customer comes to visit. I work in R&D and am an assistant manager of the lab, so I do that suggestion. we have rules for extremes. you can't wear certain inappropriate clothes or hair colors and styles that stand out to prevent distraction. On the other hand, I was developing some hair dye colors and I asked to take some home for myself. My boss suggested i take all the developer, gloves, tint brush, and anything else i want home and not buy anything. and I should mention the color was bright violet red.

[Edited on May 27, 2004 by schoolgirl]

Whats that they say? The person interviewing you knows within 3 seconds wether they are going to hire you or not. I think that says it all.

I work in the beauty industry, and obviously looks are important. If I look like crap why would anyone trust me to do a good job making THEM look good? I also noticed that if I go the extra mile to look nice, I get tipped better. Go figure.

we have a policy book and i browse over the dresscode and what not. its pretty much business casual or nicer everyday of the week but if you straight up ask the supervisor 'will my hair color affect anything? my piercing? my tattoos?' they'll usually not care, thats what it was in my case. but also the business doesnt work directly with customers and we dont really have people just coming in and looking around.
but yea depends on the business itself, whether you work face to face with customers, and your higher ups id say.

This is extremely weird for the chemical field. Many of the the people in my lab have lots of (mostly bad) tattoos that they make no attempt to cover. It probably helps that repairs to the HVAC system take precedence over fixing the regular climate control stuff, so lots of people spend the summer sweating it out in shorts under their lab coats, but I can't imagine scientists ever really caring about appearances.

As for, I fix computers. I shave twice a week and sometimes wear the clothes I paint in. Computer people don't care.

Especially going into digital media you have absolutely nothing to worry about and in many cases unique appearances are seen as a sign of creative temperment which is a good thing.
And ask yourself: As a creative person do want to work for a company with conformist views??
Talent brings $$$. No sane company will turn down talent because of tatoos or hair styles.

If ones style is a put on or an attention magnet this is a personality issue and is usually obvious to a sharp interviewer. It's not an appearance issue.

Until recently I had 16 year long unmolested dreadlocks.
I never had any trouble finding work when I really wanted it.

Congrats on your upcoming graduation BTW.

job discrimination. most companies are afraid to be sued over something like that

It's just a fact of life... Appearances shouldn't matter, but they do. That's pretty much it. On the rare occasion you find a job where most of the people don't really care, but it's just that, _rare_. Personally, I'm military, and they're all about appearance. You can be a complete shitass as long as you look all right and do what you're told. Personally, I'm about to violate written orders and get tats that show below a short sleeve shirt... Oh well. Waht are they going to do? Shave my head and send me to sea? Too late! HA!

My looks seriously hinder my work as a male model.

mine don't.

at my last job, i don't think i did too well in the interview, and after i got hired i was told the dude that hired me did it cuz "i was hot"

but i did pretty good at the job... until i was there a couple months...

fucking tech support.

It is true that many companies nowadays say they're forward-thinking and tolerant, but sometimes its the other employees that make the job tough on you. I'm not body mod'd up yet, but i noticed a big ostracization when I was working at the pub towards some girls that had facial piercings. funny thing was though, they were usually the better servers and made way better tips cuz they were comfortable in any situation. but they did talk to me sometimes about it and i did my best to make em feel great about themselves - cuz they deserved it.

You're keeping me outta work.

I'm sure if I would have had a ballsack growing out of my forehead, I wouldn't be working amongst the general public. Although, if more people had ballsacks growning out of their foreheads, it might be cool. Or even rad.