To think this isn’t nepotism?

[Abergatwenty]

I work for the IT department of a solicitors firm in a large town. We are currently switching from one IT system to another - this means that we’re having to manually transfer a lot of data from the old system to the new.

To help us do this, we have eight 18-21 year olds (including my daughter) working for us for 2 weeks to do the transferring. They are all the children of various people who work for the firm - I just sent out an email asking if anyone had any uni student children home for the holidays who wanted a bit of summer work. We’re paying them minimum wage.

This afternoon in town I bumped into the mother of a girl who my daughter was at school with. She asked what my daughter was up to and I told her she was working at the solicitors with me for a couple of weeks. This mother got very angry about this and thought it wasn’t outrageous that we hadn’t “properly advertised” the jobs so that anyone could apply and had just asked our own kids.

AIBU? The work is time consuming but completely unskilled - we didn’t need to waste time shifting through CVs and A level results to find the most academic people. The only quality required is that we can trust them - we all trust our kids, and we don’t have time to conduct interviews.

Plus, given the number of applications that would come flooding in for anything that even resembles ‘legal work experience’, assessing each applicant and selecting 8 people would have probably taken longer than the actual data transfer job!

And it’s not like the work is going to lead to full time positions - it’s just a 2 weeks, unskilled, minimum wage summer job.

There aren't enough jobs to go around just now, of any kind
bearing in mind many businesses have to recruit abroad or foreigners because of the lack of local candidates, I tend to disagree with that - and I am talking about honest, market rate job, not slave labour.

This isn’t going to help any of them get a job in law in any way. The job consists of copying and pasting. No law firm would be impressed by it

I don't agree. Any work experience is useful and helps to form the commercial awareness that lawyers are always asking for.

It is nepotism, but you had good reasons and it's much cheaper than using agencies or messing around advertising and sifting through CVs. My son is doing work experience this week and until this year, the school arranged placements. This year, we had to find our own, which basically meant most people had to rely on contacts. It is life.

Reading some responses I also think we need to be really clear about what nepotism is and isn't. You can do your absolute best for your child by buying nice houses, paying for a good education or even paying for extra curricular activities that will look good on their CV. I think everyone would agree that none of those things satisfy the criteria to be deemed nepotism, although they could make your child a nire attractive candidate if they were to apply for a work experience placement.

Using your power or influence to ascertain work experience either in your own workplace or through someone in your wider network is pretty much always nepotism and is what people are questioning. I can understand that as a parent you can group it psychologically into the same "bettering my child's prospects" category as the house, education etc but it does go that step further ethically in my opinion.

That's a really interesting point bumpitybumper. I agree with you that we probably tend to think of nepotism as being more 'wrong' even though eg being able to inherit money from your family is probably going to make a bigger difference to your life prospects than getting a few weeks data entry at a law firm, and a particular hobby might be just as useful at getting a start in the working world as a work experience placement. Yet I kind of have it in my head that nepotism can be dodgier and I can't really articulate why.

People just have quite random definitions sometimes of what's ok and what's not, I think? As an example there are one or two on here who are very anti private education (for reasons I don't disagree with) but also very keen on their kids being able to inherit their London properties. From the perspective of someone who hasn't had anything like that, the distinction seems artificial and I suspect the property wealth would make a bigger difference to an individual's life prospects. I say this as someone who does own a property and hopes to leave money to my children, but who isn't using private education, so if that makes me a hypocrite then ok!

What I mean here in this slightly garbled post is that I think your analysis is interesting and made me think.

That’s a shitty policy of the school, assume it’s due to resources. At my cash strapped comprehensive school years ago parents helped get the “slots” for work experience, often through contacts, but the school decided who did which ones, with interviews by a relatively impartial governor for the most popular options. One parent who was a journalist got a couple of 5 day slots with journalists on national papers, which were split to enable 4 teens to do it.

I coincidentally got sent to my mother’s large employer, quite a good role but I disliked it, got told off one day for some minor messing about with another work experience girl, it got back to mum on the grapevine and got in trouble at home too, got a lecture!

but the school decided who did which ones
that's disgusting, so the parents go through all the efforts which will benefit another child than their own? Why bother then.

Nepotism exists, always will, and I haven't seen one line on this thread so far showing why it could ever be wrong.

"and I am talking about honest, market rate job, not slave labour." Full time? Permanent?

That's not just my opinion it's borne out by govts own stats (even though they don't inc under 18's, recipients of disability benefits, mothers of under 5's or people over state pension age as unemployed).

There's more job seekers than jobs available (even though they inc in jobs available part time, temp, zero hours contracts).

Ok then BumpityBump then are you telling me I shouldn't be allowed to give my architect daughter a good job in my design business despite not being the best architect available OR employ my son as a site foreman for the same reason ? In fact my grandchildren do summer jobs , my friends kids do work experience and my brother also works for me !
Are you saying this is morally wrong and shouldn't be allowed ????

Where I sit it's called a FAMILY BUSINESS or is that no longer permitted?

Yes it's nepotism. But that's how the world works. Pretty much every parent gives their kids every advantage they possibly can. Except my MIL. She owns a business and hired an office assistant despite knowing I'd lost my job and her son would have benefited massively from my income if she'd hired me to do the job instead. But most normal parents give opportunities to their own kids before others.

Yeah this is nepotism. So what.

The kids get to put on their cvs they did two weeks work experience at x firm.

Will it give them an unfair advantage, not really, not s significant one anyway.

My daughters best friends father is the managing partner of a major international law firm. He gave her two weeks work. She puts it on her cv. No one is going to employ her just because of that. But it's a nice point to have on there.

My husband and i both work for large multinational companies. My husband's said our daughter could come in and work in their legal, department for work experience if she wanted. Mine said no way due to confidentiality. She didn't need my husbands as she got employed, but if she hadn't she would have been in there like a shot.

As parents we all do what we need to to help our kids out. Anyone recruiting knows to ask and can work out its nepotism quite fast. I know I've always been able to suss it at graduate interviews. It's really not a big deal at this low level.

The woman was nuts to lose her shit over it.

Full time? Permanent?

yes. I could give you so many examples.
One of the funny one was a company who couldn't find a PA - nice company, good salary, good package, good location, flexible hours over a month so could accommodate school holidays. Their crime? It was a "pest control" company and it was not glamorous enough to work there for a PA.

Company looking for candidates for 35 hours week, but over 7 days - so Saturday or Sunday shift too, higher rate than similar job, and very good package. It's pretty impossible to find people who want to work Sundays! Most of the staff is not native-English.
I am even more in admiration of emergency services who are ready to work any day and any time when I see the attitude in the private sector.

I have got many more examples!

@fontofnoknowledge
As things stand you are allowed to do all those things and I am aware this is traditionally how family businesses work. Do I think it's best practice and will lead to your business being as successful as it could be if you had employed the best talent available? Probably not. Do I think it's fair on the more talented architect and others who should have got the positions but didn't? No I don't.

To answer your question directly, in an ideal world I probably would have more regulation in place to prevent nepotism and this would probably have what you would consider to be an adverse impact on family businesses. I'm not particularly enamoured with anything (big estates, businesses, priceless artworks etc) being passed down through families as this halts social mobility and frankly isn't a fair way to distribute wealth. The rich stay rich whilst the poor don't get a look in.

Nepotism occurs in every walk of life too. I know of people who've moved family members into their council houses as joint tenants, then they've moved out. To ensure that the family member gets the council tenancy of that house after they leave, rather than it going to a stranger who's at the top of the waiting list.

Bumpity. Interesting that your examples of what you don’t believe should be allowed to be inherited are all high end. Out of interest what are you ok with in terms of inheritance or do you believe that parents shouldn’t be allowed to pass on anything at all to their children?

Just sounds like sour grapes to me.

What do you think should happen to property etc on death then?

What is so weird about this thread is the assumption that two weeks of data inputting would be a) highly sought after and b) really valuable in any future career. I don't think either of those are true.

I wonder if the OP had worked in the IT department at any other medium business, anyone would give a shit. I suspect if the OP had said she worked for an estate agent, the frothing would have been much reduced.

I'm not particularly enamoured with anything (big estates, businesses, priceless artworks etc) being passed down through families as this halts social mobility and frankly isn't a fair way to distribute wealth. The rich stay rich whilst the poor don't get a look in

Utterly ridiculous. My dh and I have worked very hard all our lives to the point where we now, in our late 40s, have an excellent standard of living. We don't need to work any harder to improve our current lives. The only thing compelling us to continue to work, and thus continue to earn and pay taxes (helping others), is that we are building up a big pot of money to leave to our daughters and make their lives as secure as possible.

Large inheritance tax is bad for the economy.

The assumption that the job would be highly sought-after is based on the OP -

Plus, given the number of applications that would come flooding in for anything that even resembles ‘legal work experience’ ...

But it isn't legal work experience. Hence the words 'even resembles'.

Yeah it's true that law work experience is ridiculously popular. I don't know what it's like in other sectors but I'd expect the firm to be inundated if they'd advertised it remotely well.

It's work experience in a law firm though. As I said, having done some legal recruitment myself I wouldn't give it any consideration, but people would still apply on the basis that it is. Whether they'd be right to is a different question.

‘The practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs.‘ but understand why you did it.

When I was 15, I got a job working at a local supermarket. Well actually, my mum got it for me as she was a shift manager there. They needed cover for that evening anf my mum volunteered me. They offered me that shift space a continued to work there part time throughout my studies for 5 years (my mum after 2 years.)
At 18, I had a summer job with my dad. He was an assistant manager. It was a big company and all the children of the head office staff used to work there in the summer. No interviews involved. I left and went back the following summer, interviewed there when a position came up and got a job there.
In a school I worked in, there were mothers and daughters working together and a mother and son. Someone else was a potential son in law to one of the assistant heads, interviewed and got a job (awkard when they split though!)
I know self employed people asking their family and friends to help out during busy periods.
Interestingly, I was just watching a youtube video on actors and their famous parents. I wonder if their background had anything to do with them getting to where they are now?!

I thought this was common place.