The Orange County Register

SANTA ANA, Calif. ? Ed Santos isn't your average-looking employee. His left arm is covered in tattoos, his lower lip is pierced, and his earlobes have holes the size of half dollars.

Does his employer care?

Santos is art director at Wahoo's Fish Tacos in Santa Ana, where one of the owners, Ed Lee, has tattoos on his upper arm of his children's names and faces and a prayer. Another owner, Lee's brother Wing Lam, wanted a tattoo and even designed the artwork for a fish tattoo, but decided not to get it because he'd have to skip surfing for three weeks while it healed.

But that doesn't mean they don't care what their employees look like.

"Even Eddie doesn't have tattoos on his neck or face," Ed Lee said of Santos. "We expect him to dress up and be respectful of others."

One in 10 Americans has a tattoo, compared with one in 100 three decades ago, according to the Alliance of Professional Tattooists in Annapolis, Md.

A poll by Harris Interactive puts the number at one in three among Americans between ages 25 and 30.

As body art becomes more common and the labor market tightens, more employers accept workers with tattoos and body piercing, said John Challenger of the executive search firm Challenger, Gray -- Christmas.

"Some employers are having trouble finding skilled workers. They are not going to let some body art get in the way of hiring the best-qualified candidate."

Many California employers agree, to a point.

"If (the employee) didn't meet the public, it wouldn't matter," said insurance broker Dennis Pollman. "But 90 percent of my customers are conservative and wouldn't appreciate tattoos and multiple piercings."

He has written into the company personnel manual that tattoos and piercings must be covered. "If they couldn't be covered up, it would influence whether I would hire the person or not."

Pollman is not alone. In a recent survey, career Web site www.Vault.com found more than half the managers surveyed would be less likely to hire an applicant with visible tattoos and body piercing, and 10 percent had disciplined workers because of tattoos or body piercing.

A job applicant with little or no experience ought to be conservative in appearance, even at a casual company, said Barbara Hubert, director of career development at Chapman University. "You never have a second chance to make a first impression. And interviews are serious events and should be taken seriously."

Employers agree.

If a job applicant had tattoos on the face or neck or studs in the nose or tongue, "we probably wouldn't hire them in the first place, and if they added (piercing) after hire, we would ask them to take (studs) out during work hours," said Ken Jacobs, president of JMG Security Systems, a commercial alarm company.

Bill Hall, partner at Action Mold in Anaheim, Calif., has different attitudes, depending on the job. He probably wouldn't hire heavily tattooed people to be sales and customer-service employees who meet the public. But he recently hired a skilled toolmaker "with enough body art to fill a wing at the Bowers Museum."