Tats in the workplace: Yea or nay?

At Sara Champion’s previous job as a project engineer for one of the country’s top construction firms, visible tattoos for professional staff were against company policy.

She found this ironic — not to mention frustrating — given that her position entailed inspecting job sites filled with tattooed construction workers.

“I was out on site all day, and I wasn’t allowed to show any of my tattoos,” says the 28-year-old Florida native, whose six large tattoos on her arms and back include a brightly colored sunflower, a marigold and a rendition of a Dia de los Muertos bride and groom on her upper left arm. “Ninety-eight degrees and long sleeves is not so cool when you’re in Miami.”

After six years with the construction firm, Champion decided to move north and find an employer that wouldn’t needle her about her body art.

She found her “perfect job” in Danbury, Connecticut, as a project manager at a design and branding agency.

Now, “I have no problem showing up to meet a big client in a T-shirt and jeans,” tattoos in plain view, she says. “I wish more companies were like this.”

You can read the rest of this article by yours truly — complete with suggestions for scoping out a tat-friendly employer — on cnn.com.

Favorite tip(s) from the article:

“Visit the employee parking lot to see how they are dressed and whether many of the employees have visible tattoos,” says the psychologist and founder of Bridgeway Career Development, a career counseling firm in Seattle. “Also ask colleagues and friends if they know anyone who works there who can give you some insider info.”

“The Web is also a gold mine of information,” she says, adding that the Web site ModifiedMind.com, which is dedicated to body art and other modifications, features a database of companies reportedly open to tattoos.

To read the whole article, lookie here.

1 comment June 24th, 2008

Bathrobe! The uniform of champions

This year’s skyrocketing gas prices are enough to make even the most diehard office suck-ups fantasize about finding a job that lets them telecommute. But is finding a new job that lets you work from home a realistic goal or just a pipe dream?

Thirty-three percent of U.S. companies allow employees to telecommute on a part-time basis, while 21 percent allow it full-time, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

In other words, although work-at-home jobs do exist, they remain few and far between…

You can read the rest of this abcnews article written by yours truly — complete with tips on how to find a telecommuting-friendly job — here.

Favorite tip from the article:

Rather than waste your time reading scam after scam advertised on Craigslist and through Google ads, see RatRaceRebellion.com, which screens work-at-home job listings and posts the pick of the litter on a daily basis. Run by the authors of The Two-Second Commute: Join the Exploding Ranks of Freelance Virtual Assistants, this site features both “earn a little pocket money” job listings (such as filling out online surveys) and “earn a living” listings (such as transcription and call-center jobs), as well as a list of telecommuting-friendly companies and a goldmine of tips for weeding out work at home scams.

Okay, here’s the rest of the article — for reals.

Add comment June 24th, 2008