To Shave Or Not To Shave

I will admit to being fascinated at times by tattoos and not because I like or even understand them because I don’t. What fascinates me are two things. One, what is that person going to look like when they are much older because I think in many cases it won’t be pretty. Two, can’t it hurt someone in terms of their career because I would imagine quite a few employers don’t want their people all “tatted up.” Of course at the rate we are going maybe in 20 years or so everyone will have these so-called works of art adorned on their bodies so it won’t make a difference.

On a somewhat related note I stumbled across something in the recent edition of Men’s Health. The magazine asked hiring managers and experts in nine different career fields if certain facial-hair choices would play a role in the applicant’s chances of getting a job. The nine categories were food service, teacher, office worker, retail, creative media, white collar, construction, barber and IT.

In all nine a clean-shaven applicant was a plus and it was the same for someone with a short beard. Eight of the nine job categories were okay with someone who has a full goatee or full mustache with only white collar managers against that facial hair. Only 5 gave the thumbs-up to a job seeker with long sideburns and less than half…4 said it was acceptable for a man to have a pencil mustache, full beard or soul patch which is a small patch of hair just above the chin and below the lower lip. While women may find the “5 o’clock shadow” very appealing it probably won’t help you chances of landing a job as the only fields that found it okay were construction, barber and creative media. Chin scruff was even worse, unless you are in creative media or construction and unless you are looking to bang nails forget about a fu Manchu or ZZ top. Of course if you work for yourself none of this really matters but in today’s very competitive job market clean-shaven and smooth just might be the way to go. By the way, according to the magazine women prefer guys with a day’s scruff when it comes to flirting but would rather kiss a guy who just shaved.