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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle

You want a good job – but you also want a facial tattoo. What should you do?

Making a statement … a man with a facial tattoo.
Making a statement … a man with a facial tattoo. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Name: Facial tattoos.

Age: As old as ink.

Appearance: Like some friends scrawled on your face while you were passed out.

They’re not my friends any more. It was a permanent marker! A face tattoo is even more permanent.

True, but you’ve only got yourself to blame. I don’t think they’re allowed to put one on you when you’re asleep. No. You’d have to really want to make a statement.

What sort of statement? For instance, the Texan rapper Post Malone recently had the words “Always Tired” tattooed beneath his eyes.

That must make people think he’s always tired. He’s also got “Stay Away” scrawled across his forehead.

Wow. You’d have trouble getting a job at Staples with all that on your face. He’s got a No 1 album out, so I don’t think he’s worried, but you raise a salient point.

Really? There’s always a first time, I guess. Remind me what it was again. That a face tattoo can make it hard to get work. A new survey shows that 78% of HR decision-makers would be less likely to hire a candidate who had one.

That’s a lot. It’s a lot more than for any other kind of tattoo. Only 50% would be less likely to hire someone with “tattoo(s) covering the entirety of one or both arms”, while 78% said a back tattoo would make no difference to their hiring decision.

Sorry, but isn’t this discrimination? How can a face tattoo make you less employable? It does demonstrate a certain lack of forward planning, in that you failed to anticipate that one day you’d be applying to work behind a perfume counter.

I suppose it’s lucky that facial tattoos aren’t more fashionable. Are you kidding? They’re all the rage, thanks to Meghan, the new Duchess of Sussex.

Meghan has a face tattoo? No, but the light spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks has become a sought-after look, so much so that an Atlanta cosmetic artist, Gabrielle Rainbow, is doing brisk business offering a tattooed alternative at $250 (£187) a pop.

But real freckles aren’t permanent. Neither are these – they last from one to three years.

That would have been about right for the “Karen 4 evah” on my chest. Yeah. Same for the one I got when QPR were promoted.

Do say: “Yes sir, I did know I was coming for an interview this morning. That’s why they’re not my friends any more.”

Don’t say: “You can see my relevant experience written all over my face – literally. Just ignore the contact number on my chin – that’s the old one.”

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