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Cynthetiq · 06-12-2007, 07:34 AM

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TODAY’S HANDS-ON MOMS TODAY’S HANDS-ON MOMS AND DADS DON’T STOP MEDDLING WHEN JUNIOR GOES OFF TO WORK
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IT wasn’t Bring Your Daddy to Work Day, but Melinda Smith was bringing her father to work.

After three days on the job at a fi nancial services fi rm, what had looked like her dream job was beginning to seem like a bust. Her offi ce cube felt sterile, her boss was always in meetings and the only co-workers she’d met were the ones who sat next to her at orientation, who worked in different departments on different floors.

It was time to take action - for Smith’s father, that is. “My daughter’s shy,” he told the Post, asking that his own name not be used, “and no matter how busy a boss is, he ought to take time out to introduce a new staffer around. But he left her to fend for herself.”

To make matters worse, her first week’s assignment called for “not a bit of human interaction”; she was tasked with studying a 200-page procedural manual. “Doing that is worse than sitting on the sidelines,” he said. “It’s bo-ring.”

So what was Daddy-do-Right planning to do when he escorted his daughter to work on Day 4? Hunt down the boss man and give him a piece of his mind?

“No anger, just a little coaching. It’s obvious that the man has never been trained as a leader,” said Smith’s father - whose plans for a little attitude adjustment were foiled when Melinda, who was unfamiliar with her company’s visitor policy, couldn’t get him past security.

Does this sound more like the opening scene of a satirical film called “Lost Without Daddy” than a real-life situation? Well it’s not. And though this all-too-real case may be extreme, it’s not an anomaly. From Connecticut to California, employers report that “helicopter” parents, so dubbed because they hover over their offspring’s every move, are increasingly becoming an occupational hazard.

Today’s parents “actively, persistently, and at times fiercely advocate for their sons and daughters in the workplace,” says Phil Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University.

In private, some employers and recruiters will admit to finding overbearing parents a pain in the neck. Rather than resist the trend, though, most are accepting them as an inevitable part of the landscape, and learning to adapt by involving them in the hiring process.

“It’s what we have to do to compete,” says Michael Kannisto, global staffing director at Bausch & Lomb, “It doesn’t matter if we like it or not - with 77 million baby boomers retiring, it’s a matter of arithmetic.”

Taking the lead

Recruiter Pete Medrano, who brings more than 80 new interns into the Applied Physics lab at John Hopkins each year, started noticing the trend a few years ago.

“Sometimes it begins with a call from a parent inquiring about an internship,” he says. “And when I probe a little and ask in which specific area their son or daughter’s interest lies, the parent often doesn’t know.”

Medrano then suggests the offspring call for themselves, but all too often it’s the parent who calls back a second time, eager to discuss the answer.

Though Medrano believes most of the applications he receives are completed by the actual candidate, other recruiters suspect parents have a hand in the process - and sometimes more than a hand. Staffers following up on applications have run into “candidates” who are completely unaware that they’ve applied, and not at all interested in the job.

Hovering parents are a common presence at college job fairs - usually with their children in tow, but not always. Klint Kendrick, a recruiter for Boeing, was recently approached by a mother whose progeny was too busy studying to shop for his own job; she pummeled Kendrick with questions while touting her son’s grade point average.

While recruiters don’t necessarily see a parent’s presence as a turn-off, it does matter who takes the lead.

“When a parent introduces his child and then fails to step aside, it’s awkward, not only for me, but for the prospective employee,” says Kendrick. “After all, it’s the employer and prospective employee that need to form a relationship, not the employer and parent.

“Will you back off!?” Kendrick and a mass of other recruiters might shout if they could - but they can’t. Parents are often stockholders, customers and potential employees of the companies recruiters represent, and alienating them is not good business. Besides, if a young prospect has a great background, hiring managers unanimously said they’d want to interview him regardless of the parents.

Of course, when the interview rolls around, Mom and Dad might make another appearance. At Boeing, for example, an interviewee brought his mother not only into the reception area, but into the actual interview, Kendrick recalls. A recruiter for a department store chain tells of a mother who sat in the lobby while her daughter went through a four-hour interview session. And at still another company, a source reports, a mother showed up and interviewed on behalf of her sick daughter. “We’re so close,” she told the interviewer, “that I know exactly how my daughter would answer.”

Generation gap

When these things happen, employers are at a loss, first, because there’s no policy dictating how to play host to a pop-in parent, and second, because they can’t help questioning how much managerial support would be required by a new hire who can’t get through an interview without Mom or Dad.

Baby boomers who grew up as latchkey kids tend to look at this from one angle, while millennials who were ferried around in minivans with “Baby On Board” signs in the window see it from quite another.

“This generation is accustomed to constant support and guidance,” says recruiter Anne Wilke. “For example, when I get a new job, I’m comfortable going to get my employee ID on my own; I don’t expect someone to walk me over to security. This new generation does.”

This is not to say that millennials are less capable or lazier than their forebears. “They’re collaborators, not slackers,” says Gardner, who studies graduates’ transitions into the workplace.

Be it good or bad, employers are recognizing that today’s entry-level hires are not making their choices alone. Recruiter Michael Homula of Bearing Fruit Consulting now asks a simple question at each initial interview: “Who will influence your decision should you be made an offer - a parent, college adviser, older sibling?” The answer is less important than its accuracy.

How so? Last year, when a candidate proudly told Homula she’d be deciding alone, he expected her to stay true to her word. But when she called to discuss the offer, there was Dad in the background: Tell him you want this; make him change that. Dad and daughter later showed up in Homula’s office making like Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr. in “Jerry Maguire.” He ultimately withdrew the offer.

“Companies want to hire adults,” he says.

To avoid such situations, and provide parents with information their offspring may want them to have, some employers - Ernst & Young and Merrill Lynch among them - have created information packets that can be easily forwarded or even sent directly to the parents of individuals to whom they’ve made offers.

Circling hawks

Though this reduces the need for employers and parents to interact directly, there are still those folks (primarily fathers) who feel it’s their duty to improve on their child’s compensation. Referred to as “blackhawks” because of their aggressive nature, they descend upon employers demanding higher salaries, more vacation and better benefit packages. Of the eight recruiters interviewed for this story, seven reported such an encounter.

“If a kid out of college needs his parent to run interference in his behalf, then that kid can’t work here, because we’re never going to be able to hold his hand like that,” says Jim Fay, a parenting expert who coined the term “helicopter parents.”

Blackhawks invade with even greater frequency when offers fail to materialize. These parents, who may have successfully won their kids exam retakes and term-paper extensions in the past, now find themselves rather powerless; employers seldom change their minds.

And what happens when the kid gets the job and complains it’s less of a walk in the park than they expected?

As Melinda Smith’s boss narrowly avoided learning: trouble. Parents have been known to call and complain that workloads are too heavy and hours too long; some even demand promotions. They’ve also been known to improve their kid’s work or help them meet deadlines.

This poses a problem not only for the boss, but for the adult-child, says Fay.

“If a child is shielded from the bumps and bruises that are part of life, how is he going to handle the big things?” he says. When a parent rushes to do for the child what he can do for himself, the message the kid gets is: “I’m not capable of doing this on my own.”

Margaret Regan, president of the Future Work Institute, predicts that after this transitional phase, employers, new hires and parents will learn to adapt to one another.

“The entitled millennial, who’s used to hearing hands clapping every time he does something right, will have to get used to working without that kind of support, and employers, who are in a state of shock at present, will have to get used to a generation for whom the employer relationship is not the be all and end all.”

All of this is easy to say when jobs are plentiful, notes Colin Kingsbury of HRM Direct. “But the hiring of entry-level employees is volatile according to economic conditions,” he notes.

“I suspect that a lot of the silliness we now see will evaporate like the morning fog with the next downturn of the economic cycle.”

Heavy meddle

WONDERING if your parents are crossing the line? Or, if you’re a parent, wondering if you’re too hands-on with your kid’s career? Here are some signs things have gone too far.

Your parents are too involved in your career if:

* They call an employer to complain about your workload. Attempting to earn your employer’s respect after a call like this is all but impossible.

* They try to negotiate a promotion on your behalf. Unless you’re an entertainer or an athlete, you don’t need an agent, and even if you did, Mom wouldn’t be your best choice. Look what happened to Lindsay Lohan.

* They attend job fairs on your behalf. Recruiters want relationships with their future workers, not those who once diapered them.

You’re too involved in your child’s career if you:

* Make vacation requests on his behalf - especially in writing. If you do this, don’t be surprised if his boss posts it on the break-room refrigerator.

* You redo her work assignments. If you have that much time on your hands, please get a life - or at least hope that your employer doesn’t catch you doing it on their time.

* You write your kid’s resume. Unless you’re planning to outlive your child, he needs to learn to do this for himself.

I don't know what to think of this. As a hiring manager and having managed people for 20 years now, I can say without a doubt, if I saw this happen it would be VERY negative on the 90 day probationary period. If I could absorb the workload somehow, I'd send them packing immediately. Especially if that "parent" thought that I didn't know how to lead, he'd have another thing coming since I have successfully managed over 50 people at one time.

The whole point of hiring someone is that I hired that individual, not their cheerleaders, team, or entourage.