Jobhop Jobhop's blog : Tattooed And Talented

For a while now I’ve been thinking I should write a post about tattoos and talent. Tattoos are so popular but still there’s employers who think that people can’t be talented and tattooed at the same time, it’s just pure ignorance!

One in three young adults have one tattoo or more, that’s a lot of tattoos and it doesn’t look like tattoos are going out of fashion, they’re becoming more popular.

If employers decide that they wont employ people with tattoos then they’re going to miss out on some very valuable talent. It seems that some employers don’t care so much for the talent if the talent comes tattooed,tattoos are a definite no no for some employers.

Take Claire Shepherd, she was excited after she had a phone interview with Deeset and they offered her the job. ( More about what happened to Claire in The Metro )

Just think about that for a minute, the only interview Claire had was a phone interview, but she must’ve shined on that call because she was offered the job immediately, happily Claire accepted their offer.

When the company realised that Claire had tattoos they decided to sack her!

Did Claire’s tattoos stop her from being a talented retail merchandiser? No not at all.

Did the tattoos make Claire forget about her career experience in management? No they didn’t because tattoos don’t make people forget anything!

Do Claire’s tattoos offend people? If 1 in 3 young adults have tattoos then I highly think not.

Claire was very upset, she felt discriminated and posted her ordeal on Facebook. Not before long her post went viral, and guess who come running back to offer her the job again? Yes, correct it was Deeset. So after offering Claire the job, then sacking her, they then offered her the job again, they’d obviously forgot about the power of social media!

Claire turned the job offer down, she’d now been snapped up by retailers B & M, they knew talent when they saw it and were not at all concerned about tattoos.

Claire had a terrible candidate experience. Deeset failed to consider that Claire is also a consumer who is very well connected to many other consumers. What that means for Deeset is their employer brand is now damaged because other candidates will be wary of them, but also consumers will be wary of them.

Because of Claire’s ordeal I’m going to try to post regular tattooed and talented posts. Hopefully it will break down a few barriers, the ones that people put up because they only see the world their way.

In the next tattooed & talented post I chat with Holly Massingham from Norfolk

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Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk

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