To be fair, the default stance on interview attire for men is a suit, which covers like 95% of a persons body.
A button down and a decent pair of jeans, maybe. But I can think of 0 times I've worn a suit to an interview.
Anyway, the point remains the same though, tattoos are still expected to be covered.
The interviewed person should first and foremost be comfortable. What if wearing a suit makes someone uncomfortable or self conscious? What if hiding their arm/neck tattoos makes them less confident or worry about being judged? Why would I want a candidate to be thinking about that rather than the interview?
Honestly, why should I care if they show up covered head to toe in ink, or cross dressing, or whatever else makes them most comfortable? Obviously there's a limit -- you can't show up to the interview naked -- but all this about managing other people's appearances disappoints me so much.
Had a candidate a couple of months ago with pants so baggy the crotch hung around his thighs and the whole apparatus appeared to be in danger of falling down (no belt, of course), and when he stood up to write on the board, his choice of underwear brand was apparent.
I just wanted to voice my point of view here. I have a terrible sense of "what looks nice" off the bat, have depression, anxiety, possibly on the spectrum according to my doctor, and I live alone. Things like this I'm scared of, while to an interview I 100% make sure everything fits properly, etc. I don't always have a great sense as to what I look like, so I'm scared of other people's decisions based on how I look, act, etc.
Bangalore was the opposite end of the spectrum. Not only casual attire but a casual attitude to the interview in general (cell phone on the bus, in the park, etc). I don't know if that would hold for local, in-person interviews, but was true for video interviews (development team is split 50/50 between DC metro and Bangalore, with managers in both locations).
At my employer, arm or neck tattoos would be noticed, but probably not impact a developers job prospects. Management might be a different story.
My wife is in banking and a suit is 100% expected at interviews. And tattoos covered. And piercings anywhere but the ear removed. A face or neck tattoo would likely be an immediate disqualifier for a job at HQ and probably also in their call centers or branches. Of course, they also dress true business casual every day (no jeans, men wear jackets, etc).
This difference being the quintessential culture shift compared to california (aka silicon valley) dress code, with shorts and shirt being a very direct reaction to it
But this is based on hearsay and history; I’m not old enough to experience it myself ;)
Both are large and old.
When I meet with clients in any sort of sales capacity, I wear a suit. Daily wear is nice casual (jeans, button down shirt). Conventions or site visits are pants and a jacket, no tie.
Food service? Construction? I think a lot of folks are failing to include things like trades, services industries, etc.
Sure, most white collar interviews out east might require a suit.
> At my employer, arm or neck tattoos would be noticed, but probably not impact a developers job prospects.
This bums me out. I'm a software manager about to get full sleeve tattoos. You know what doesn't affect my ability to be a good software engineer or manager? My appearance. The fact that someone would say, "This person is great, except I don't like the way they look, so maybe let's not hire them" is truly awful, and I'd hope that at least someone on the hiring committee would push back hard.
This is just being shouted to the masses, not to you personally: If a qualified candidates only disqualification are his tattoos, he's still a qualified candidate.
Also, I've had visible tattoos (hands, neck, arms) my entire adult life. I've never had an issue with them involving employment. Excluding the time an employer wanted to put pictures of them on their website and I decline. Two weeks later I was laid off. Either they were going to fire me and wanted to take pictures of me on my way out, or they weren't going to fire me and this made me seem like I wasn't a "team player".
I think maybe 25% of my interviews have been in a suit, the rest being some version of industry specific clothing (chef's whites) or just jeans and button-down. I can't imagine I'm that much of an outlier here.
Apropos of the general subject, I've had to give feedback to more than one person in their probation period along the lines of "buy a belt and use it, nobody wants to see your underwear or what your underwear should be covering". There are some shockingly badly dressed software engineers. Comfortable and casual is one thing, but your clothes falling off you or exposing parts of yourself nobody wants to see?
[0] I think in US English, one would call this a "formal shirt". In England, it's just a shirt.
fwiw, the phrase "shirt and tie" in American English is understood to be a button up shirt (I don't think most people specifically call this a "formal shirt") and tie. The "and tie" acts as a contextual modifier since it's rarely assumed someone would be wearing a tie with a t-shirt or something casual.
"Clothing is a form of self expression, which employers don't want because <reasons>."
I wonder if my relatively formal attire in a sea of software engineer uniforms marks me out as one of these self-expressers - perhaps one day I'll be asked if I could please wear a t-shirt to work :)
That's just me; I like to look sharp. I expect that I am judged on that by some - look what he's wearing, I bet he can't even write code! - but as people here have implied in these very threads, if a company turns you down because you're well-dressed, you probably didn't want to to work there anyway!