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.

I don't understand people harping on about the privilege of getting 2 weeks paid data entry experience, almost like it's a dream opportunity.

It's really not that hard to find a job. The problem I see more often is people feeling entitled to a better job and better pay then they have the experience and training for. If they had more realistic expectations they would find there are plenty of jobs out there.

It is MUCH easier to find an office job in the UK then in the part of the US I grew up in.

I don't get the outrage. Surely any working parent could get their kid some boring work experience in their field?

Ginger - can you not understand that many children/ young adults do not have a working parent to magic up opportunities for them?

Or that even if they’re working the work may be grim or they may be in no position to offer work experience?

The difference in perspectives on this thread is quite telling, I think.

I'm a lawyer because of nepotism. My father knew a lawyer in a magic circle firm because he had worked with him (father isn't a lawyer himself). Because of that connection I got two weeks of work experience in that magic circle firm. Which meant that when I came to apply for summer internships, I had a massive advantage over other kids who hadn't had work experience because they didn't have parents who knew lawyers. And doing a summer internship meant I was a prime candidate for being offered a traineeship and then ultimately a job. I'm not saying I couldn't have done it without the work experience - but it was an enormous boost.

It wasn't illegal or particularly immoral in my opinion for my father and his lawyer friend to help me in this way. People help their family members all the time in all sorts of ways. But I would be beyond disingenuous to suggest that it wasn't nepotism or that it didn't give me a huge advantage over others.

A data entry job isn't the be all and end all of work experience but a lot of PPs aren't recognising that for many young people, it would be absolutely impossible for them to gain work experience in a professional office environment - because their parents don't have the right connections and a lot of work places won't offer work experience to young people they have no knowledge of or connection with.

I don't think anyone is realistically suggesting that OP should have advertised this post formally. That would have been disproportionately expensive and time consuming. And I don't think we should be trying to ban people from offering work experience to their relatives or friends. It's ok to help people you know.

But what we should be doing is maintaining an awareness of societal inequalities and considering what we can (and should) do to address these. There are, for example, organisations that vet young people and try to set them up with work experience opportunities - maybe next time a job like this comes up OP could look into that. My firm now doesn't accept informal work experience applications from anyone connected to an employee - they have to go through a formal and anonymous application process instead. Many schools also seek to arrange work experience for pupils. We can all do a lot to try and level this playing field without explicitly condemning work experience for family members.

Would this woman have been happier had you jumped through all her hoops only for the same eight people haven to get the jobs because “they gave a stronger interview” a wonderfully subjective phrase for a subjective process. Happens anywhere where someone has an in.

Gruach, fair enough. But does that mean that parents who are working and can shouldn't do this Surely you would? Or if you had a friend who worked in a job your DC was interested in, you might ask them? I just don't think OP has done anything wrong by not advertising it.

In investment banking pre-grad internships, a lot of the larger banks are now required by their HR teams to discount work experience. So students get assessed based on their interview (and grades) and not how many of their connections are willing to get them jobs. This should be enshrined into law.

FFS people get a grip !
How about EVERY SINGLE family owned business.. ?
How many ' ... and sons ' and more recently '... and daughters' should my Father who owned a law firm not be permitted to pass it on to my older sister (who's a lawyer) because it's nepotism. ?

Of course it's fucking nepotism. It's a job obtained by familial link !

It is not illegal or immoral. Why would my father pass a business and work he has created from scratch on to anyone but his family. Thus 'providing employment ' that others wouldn't have access to. ? This whole thread especially Grauch's posts are just peculiar.. !

Life is not fair.
Dad didn't give me a job. On the other hand I'm not a lawyer.. boo hoo.
Dcs got work experience in a law firm with grandad, architects with family friend of mine and PR company family friend of DH..
Suppose that was a 'immoral' too ?

The place it is unacceptable is the state sector. Where 'the business ' is owned by every tax payer.' So all should have equal access.

Otherwise it's entirely up to your firm OP. Your friends mum needs a reality check. !

.. and charities of course. As they are not 'owned' by the business head.. the salaries are paid by donations and therefore have an obligation to pay the best people for the work they do to maximise the return to the organisation.

Private business has no such obligation legally or morally.

Everyone does this for their kids, surely? I've done the exact same thing at MiLs firm when I was 18.

They get 2 weeks of money and someone on their CV, you get trustworthy workers who aren't questioning why they aren't doing something more 'involved'.

I mean it is technically nepotism ... but not exactly the sinister kind.

See this alll the time in medical & dental world. Its who you know

If people are arguing that this is unfair because of how this adds to the kids' CV, then I guess the real problem is that either

a) the kids are lying on their CVs (which the disadvantaged kids are equally capable of doing – if you're gonna call data entry legal experience then why not just make it up entirely? Go stand outside the building and open the door for people coming and going and call it legal experience!)

b) if the kids aren't lying, then why are other law firms/schools placing so much emphasis on someone doing two weeks of data entry? They probably shouldn't do that.

Seems perfectly normal to me. Lots of things happen to people in life because of who they know, that's just the way it is.

It would be different if the boss was bringing his sons and daughters into senior positions instead of advertising them for existing staff, or something like that.

But a bit of work experience in a company that one of your relatives works in? Absolutely no big deal.

Gruach

You don't have to have a working parent to get a couple of weeks experience of mundane and routine office work. Lots of kids get this kind of 'opportunity' from relatives, neighbours, parents of friends etc. It really isn't some kind of closed shop type thing for the privileged few.

It is acceptable and reasonable nepotism.

It doesn't really matter whether or not having the work on their CV is a potential benefit, though I think it is. The mere benefit of being offered minimum wage work by a relative makes it nepotism. In fact the offer alone is enough, nepotism would have taken place even if they didn't accept the offer!

I did work like this many years ago at my mum's workplace - I was 16 and worked all summer transferring files with a couple of other similar aged kids.

It's not nepotism when it's just s job like this.

If your child got an unadvertised apprenticeship then yes it would be.

Woman should mind her own and jog on!

Of course it’s nepotism. Despite the hassle your firm should be advertising any position of that sort. It’s only fair to the rest of the young people who are trying to build up their experience portfolio.

I’ve found this rife in the public sector too. At my ex place of work the vast majority of temp/short term/weekend jobs were given to children of people who already worked in the Council. Or they’d be nominally put on peak relief contracts for a bit so that they could access internal only posts during a job freeze. Same surnames all over the place. Husbands, wives and adult kids all working in the Council. They may have points based panel interview systems which are supposed to stop that but of course if you know what to say to hit all the points then you get the job. The inside knowledge makes it happen.

A private company doesn't have a duty to be providing work experience to young people at time and expense to themselves. RoseWhiteTips. What the OP did was sensible and reasonable.

It it was a public sector organisation it would be different.

Likewise if management were being unfair to their own employees by bringing in relatives at higher levels on higher salaries there would be a workers' rights issue.

But neither of those situations apply.

Of course it bloody is nepotism! They got the 'job' because of their parent's position in the firm

I'm not begrudging it but it's undeniably biased and definite nepotism

Are people really suggesting it's that hard to get a temp job in an office? I grew up in a part of the country not exactly known for it's job opportunities and I still managed to find summer temp work in various settings when I was at uni.

I accept having a parent who helps you with this is nice, and it is nepotism but if her daughter wants a summer temp job I bet she could find one. I would also bet she hasn't bothered to look.

The only reason this job will give anyone an advantage is that there's a proportion of people who graduate uni with no paid work experience at all. And yes, if you lack contacts it can be harder to find this but it's not impossible.

It is nepotism...but only temporary.

Of course this is nepotism

Everyone saying oh it doesn’t matter, and how ridiculous, and employers won’t care, and it’s just ordinary office work, and it’s not that different from shelf stacking really needs to read this cartoon about privilege and how those tiny little differences stack up over time for those that have it vs those that don’t

And to the pp who took the lady to task for openly advertising auch positions, because it is SUCH an imposition on her poor hr department, i’d like to ask you: what do you think an hr department exists for?