Helicopter Parents Even Participate in Job Interviews!

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Helicopter parents have moved from swooping down on their offspring at colleges and universities to participating in job interviews.

Office Team, a subsidiary of Robert Half International Inc., reports that more than a third of senior managers it interviewed – 35% – “said they find it annoying when helicopter parents are involved in their kids’ search for work.”

Another third, 34%, would prefer that parents remove themselves from “their children’s search for work. Only 20% said guidance from parents “is not a problem.”

Managers conducting job interviews with college students and those just graduated provided Team Office with some of their most unusual or “surprising behavior” of parental meddling:

• “The candidate opened his laptop and had his mother Skype in for the interview.”
• “A woman brought in a cake to convince us to hire her daughter.”
• “One parent asked if she could interview for her child because he had somewhere else to be.”
• “A father asked us to pay his son a higher salary.”
• “One mom knocked on the office door during the interview and asked if she could sit in.”
• “Parents have arrived with their child’s resume and tried to convince us to hire him or her.”
• A job seeker was texting his parents the questions I was asking during the interview and waiting for a response.”
• “Once a father called us pretending he was from the candidate’s previous company and offered praise for his son.”
• “Parents have followed up to ask how their child’s interview went.”
• “A father started filling out a job application on behalf of his kid.”
• “I had one mother call and set up an interview for her son.”
• “Moms and dads have called to ask why their child didn’t get hired.”

And one parent took a reverse psychology approach: “When we called one candidate, his mom answered and asked us not to hire him.”

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.