Visible tattoos mightn't stop people getting a job, but could affect the clients they deal with.
That's according to Peter Cosgrave, managing director of Futurewise.
Four out of five recruitment and HR professionals Newstalk Breakfast spoke to said that tattoos can have an influence on a candidate's chances of getting a job.
Peter agrees: "There's no question that having a tattoo doesn't affect your job performance.
"I think a lot about what this is about is about how other people might be affected by it, even if they don't know it themselves.
"Many of them may be conservative, the office jobs, working in professional services and Government departments or in sales departments.
"I think it still affects you".
He says the issue is unlikely to go away.
"Some people say 'We should be less conservative', but you can even see in the world right now many countries are becoming more conservative.
"So I'm not sure it's going to go away anytime soon".
'Unconscious bias'
He believes a visible tattoo, versus one you can hide, can make the difference.
"We have this thing we all heard about called unconscious bias, and we all think we don't have it - but the keyword here is 'unconscious'.
"So if you're going in to have a surgery, would you be OK with your surgeon having a face tattoo - or your lawyer having a face tattoo?
"You might decide 'It wouldn't bother me in the slightest' - but I can guarantee some people it would.
"And there would definitely be some people it would affect who wouldn't know it affects them, and that's the challenge.
"It does say something about you, and you have to be aware of that, if you're going to have a tattoo that is visible to somebody 24/7.
"But the biggest reason, by a mile, is [in] many jobs it's not about the employer: it's about their clients.
"So they have this unknowable that they don't know if their clients are going to be affected by it.
"May be a lot of your clients are conservative, or senior citizens, and it affects them more.
"It's just a risk they're not going to take.
"So it's not that they don't believe you can do that job - they're just saying it's an unknowable that I just don't want to take a risk on".
