<p>Hi parents! I’m a journalism student writing a story on helicopter parenting in the workplace. I’m an infrequent poster/longtime browser on CC but thought what a great place this would be to get views on the subject of parent involvement in the workplace. I’m just looking to see what everyone thinks about this growing trend. Do you involve yourself with your kids job search or do you leave it completely up to your kid? If you are involved, to what extent? Do you call employers, submit resumes on your child’s behalf, etc? Do you think parents who involve themselves give their kids an unfair advantage? I would appreciate any personal experiences/thoughts on the subject. Thanks for reading!</p>
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<p>I assume you are not referring to a parent “puttiing in a word” for their kid with a family member or friend who works at a company which can be okay, if done properly. Otherwise any parental contact with an employer would likely kill the applicant’s chances.</p>
<p>Far from giving their children an unfair advantage, parents who involve themselves in the employment process are a major cause of eye-rolling among human resources professionals, and damage their children’s chances of being hired, unless their involvement is completely invisible to the employer. (Giving advice, helping with negotiating a salary etc. are fine as long as all communication comes from the kid.)</p>
<p>There was a recent thread on CC on the topic. You might want to search for it.</p>
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<p>Do you have any statistics on this? I don’t recall seeing anyone on CC admit to doing this and CCers admit to doing a lot of things …</p>
<p>Is this really an epidemic problem or a rarity?</p>
<p>The last time I got involved in my son’s work life was when I drove him to a place of business to pick up an application. He was too young to drive at the time. He’s 20 now and has had several jobs, two great internships, and many more job offers. He figured it all out on his own, which is what you need to do in order to have the confidence to ace the job interviews and succeed at the jobs.</p>
<p>Agree with BCEagle91; have not read or heard that parents are helicoptering with respect to jobs. Please share any details or statistics with us, as it would be interesting.</p>
<p>I was asked and did help my niece with her resume and letter of application. Helped her edit it because it was 2 pages; after we were done, it was one page & had better grammar.</p>
<p>Aspiring Journalism student: hint to you. This is a poor fishing hole. Off the top of my head, I would think you would want to go to HR industry fora, no?</p>
<p>What comment of any significance (beyond a banal anecdote here and there) do you expect to find here?</p>
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<p>I’ve actually heard of a parent doing this from my supervisor. The parent called to check on her daughter’s application status. If her chances weren’t already dead (I had gotten the job in question, so the position was filled), this would have definitely killed them.</p>
<p>I think it’s different if a parent is helping to proof a resume or acting as a sounding board. Even if the parent is combing through job listings and actually writing cover letters, which I think is totally wrong, there could be an unfair advantage because the parent isn’t communicating directly with the potential employer. Once the employer starts to hear from the parent, though, I think that pretty much destroys their offspring’s chances.</p>
<p>I own a business. One of my young employees - new hire out of college - had his mom call his boss two times! One was after the employee had an accident in his car and couldn’t rent a car and his mom didn’t know what to do because they lived a few hours apart. </p>
<p>The next was when my manager encouraged him to perhaps look for a different kind of job because shockingly enough - he didn’t really have the maturity to handle what our job entailed. He wasn’t getting fired, they just had the discussion that something else may be a better fit for him. The mother wanted an explanation and discuss it all with him. My mgr refused. He was nice to her, but wouldn’t talk to her about it.</p>
<p>My manager pulled him into a meeting and told he would do him a favor and let him know it is never okay for mommy to call your boss. Ever. For the rest of your life unless there was some kind of life and death emergency. He wasn’t even embarrassed about it.</p>
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<p>Two separate things.</p>
<p>It’s pretty obvious that it isn’t something to be done; but I think that the OP wants to hear from parents that did do this and there doesn’t seem to be any in the CC community that has or cares to talk about it.</p>
<p>My mother totally is guilty. She hasn’t helicoptered where I work, thank goodness. But when I was about to graduate college she mailed out several resume’s, without me knowing, and even called me one day that someone called me to set up a resume. I was floored. My sister got a job as a waitress when she was 16 and my mom mentioned something to the manager of the place (they knew each other) that my sister wasn’t really a people person and she was surprised she wanted to waitress. The manager then switched my sister over to bus girl. (Nevermind the fact that waitressing would have forced her to come out of her shell). When my sister said she needed off a weekend to come to my college graduation (she told them like a month in advance) and they scheduled her anyway, she informed them again that she couldn’t make it. When she didn’t come in they refused to give her any hours for the next month. My mom drove over there and told them not to bother scheduling her again because she quit. My sister was ticked that she made her quit. My mom then felt bad that she quit her from her job and hired her to work at her place for the remainder of the summer until she found a new job elsewhere.</p>
<p>eyemamom, that is so strange. Why the mother would call is beyond me. </p>
<p>Not that this means anything in this context but my S had a car accident, hit an animal driving to work. Didn’t even tell us until he talked to us next, he arranged to get a quote and get it fixed and arrange for a rental car. The only thing I know about him renting a car is when he sent me a picture of the rental car, a big Chrysler 200. He thought it was funny to drive such a large car lol! S graduated last year and is at his first job. He didn’t say he had any problems renting a car and he lives across the country from us.</p>
<p>My H and I have not offered any assistance to our children in their pursuit of employment or internship. From my experience, I feel many parents use their networking to find job opportunities for their kids. I hear about many parents helping with networking. Probably in the same way I think kids receive help from fraternity brothers or other ways of networking.</p>
<p>H does a lot of hiring and while it isn’t common, it does happen and is becoming more common but still not commonplace. I have a few friends that work in retail management and it is an issue in that industry, especially with the high school aged kids. It’s mainly parents calling in ask for days off for kids or calling in 'sick" for kids, etc. but sometimes it is parents calling to check up on the kids after an interview “how did my child do? Is he in the running” type questions. Every once in a while they will have a parent come to the interview with the child and try to sit in on the interview, rare but it happens, especially in one specific demographic area. It makes for good stories when we go out to dinner with these friends.</p>