This general circumstance is becoming strangely common in the business world.
A veteran hiring manager is impressed with a recent college graduate’s credentials. He’s attended a good school, earned excellent grades, and has relevant summer job experience.
He did a solid job in the initial brief HR telephone screening interview.
All the stars seem aligned. The hiring manager is hopeful he’ll be impressed with the young man at the in-person interview and will want to extend an offer.
But then something happens that leaves the hiring manager astonished, and not in a positive way.
On the appointed day, the young man shows up right on time for the interview.
With his mother.
Helicopter Parenting
Facts can sometimes feel stranger than fiction.
Employment survey data shows that “1 in 5 employers have had a recent college graduate bring a parent to a job interview.”
All I can say to this is the highly technical business term: yikes!
Employment research also shows that this kind of “helicopter parenting,” as the practice is called, can occur in numerous different scenarios.
Parents may become directly involved in salary negotiations.
Parents may strenuously complain when a hoped-for job offer doesn’t materialize.
When a young employee does get a job and then experiences conflicts in the workplace, parents may try to interfere. And so on.
Independence and Resilience
Having retired from the corporate world in 2012, I believe I’m a little too old to have been on the receiving end of this kind of parental tomfoolery.
But I can definitely tell you how I would have responded to it: not well.
What would it have said to me about the emotional toughness and independence of a prospective employee? As a manager, I wanted to hire employees who could stand on their own two feet and be resilient. Not delicate flowers, but adults who could be counted on to get things done in a deadline-driven and at times coldly bottom-line-oriented business environment.
Good parents want the best for the children. They want to support them. Sure, of course, as a parent I understand that’s totally natural. But when it comes to assisting young adults in the working world, parental support can quickly turn excessive.
One recruiting firm summed it up nicely. “Helicopter parenting,” they wrote, “especially when it extends to the workplace, impacts the credibility of the candidate. Professionals need to be accountable for their own work and mistakes. When parents get involved, they make it seem as if the child is not capable of succeeding independently.”
That’s the crux of the matter: thoughtful managers are understandably wary of hiring (or keeping) someone who they feel may have trouble succeeding on their own.
