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.

MissVanjie First, in a lawyer cabinet, the HR department is often one or two people. So yes, big imposition, they have much better things to do.
Second, the HR department is often rubbish for recruiting I am sorry to say...

It's not to spend hours recruiting for positions which can be filled in a few hours with zero effort to satisfy some misguided notion of fairness

that woman is ridiculous, that's life and that's how it should be. Whoever pretends this doesn't happen to everyone at some point is being an hypocrite.

Your mate tells you about a great deal before it's advertised, you babysit for your neighbours, you give a job to your own kids. Who on their right mind would prefer to employ a complete stranger when they already found someone they can trust and perfectly qualified.

a lot of the larger banks are now required by their HR teams to discount work experience. this is getting insane, why would anyone try not to employ the best person for the job? Being the most confident person in an interview doesn't necessarily mean you are the most competent for the role
Many HR are useless, that's a good example!

that woman is ridiculous, that's life and that's how it should be. Whoever pretends this doesn't happen to everyone at some point is being an hypocrite.

I agree. This woman wouldn't have been angry if her dd had been asked to do it.

If her dd had been asked to do it, it wouldn't have been nepotism...

Of course it's nepotism.

it's a very fine line in this context to make a difference between a parent and a friend... some people are just hypocrites, that's all.

I really can't believe that a few kids getting a couple of weeks of totally unskilled work at minimum wage is causing such annoyance and analysis. It's not as if the managers just gave the jobs to their own kids, they asked any staff with student kids at home for the Summer who were looking for a bit of holiday work to contact them.

Some of those kids may be children of staff working at a very low level in the organisation who don't get much in the way of privilege or opportunity. It was a pragmatic way of solving a problem, for a private organisation who didn't have the time or resources to organise a big recruitment campaign.

the professionally offended always find something to be offended and bitter about. Sadly we seem to give them a very loud voice nowadays, instead of sticking to common sense.

True ikeep

@ikeepaforkinmypurse
People aren't offended, but people are answering OP's question that yes this does represent nepotism. Is it the worst case anyone has ever seen or unusual? No of course it isn't however nepotism by definition means that the playing field is tipped in favour of some and against others. It's all very well saying that the opportunity is so small that it's irrelevant or that it's a parent's right or duty to help their child, but ultimately it will normally be those that are less privileged that lose out as they do they not have the network of family and friends to offer them these opportunities. I think as a society we shouldn't be promoting nepotism as it fundamentally goes against the principles of fairness that most of us would view as important.

No one's 'promoting nepotism'. We are simply saying that sometimes it's the most practical solution for a short term, low paid job that needs to be done quickly.

Are you saying if a shop owner needed someone to help with doing up a display and gave their niece a few quid to come in for a couple of days during her Summer holidays they are being unfair and giving her an advantage that could accumulate and put her in a privileged position?

most posters are based in the UK, so if people are really offended by the concept, they might have a look at our hereditary monarchy .

@user1485342611
Well think about it this way, if you were another young person that was fantastically creative but didn't have any friends or families that had shops, do you think it could be a lot harder to get the opportunity to earn a few quid in the holiday through utilising your talent to create window displays? What if earning that money meant that you could learn to drive or buy some art supplies to set up a little business?

What I'm saying is that for the privileged these little acts of nepotism here and there probably do make little difference when looked at in isolation. The cumulative effect however could be a lot more significant and have repercussions far beyond what we can envisage.

do you think it could be a lot harder to get the opportunity to earn a few quid in the holiday

of course, but some of us managed just the same without any support in a foreign country, and work damn hard to ensure their own kids could have a lot of help.
Prince Louis will have a lot more opportunities than my own kids, and so will Tony Blair children. That's life, but it's unreasonable to expect people not to go for the easier option, to find it easier to deal with people they know, and to get some benefit from working wherever they are.

Some NHS families have priority access to private rooms, the family of airline staff have priority upgrade, the kids of the shop manager have first pick of summer jobs there. I can't see anything wrong in it.

I to work in a law firm. If, when my DD is old enough to work and an opportunity came up for her to help out/do a temp job, hell yeah would i suggest her for the job. On the other hand, if a friend/friend's child asked, i would do the same for them.

I work bloody hard to provide for my children, and if at any point in the future i can do something to help them move on, get their foot on the ladder then i will. Be damned if i'd say sorry DD can't help you with this as x, y or z parents don't work, and they won't have the same opportunity as you so its not fair, sorry!

@ikeepaforkinmypurse
To be honest I just find your post a bit sad. You admit you had to work harder than those benefitting from nepotism to get to where you have got to but instead of using this as motivation to try and di you part to abolish nepotism, you would rather just make sure your kids are beneficiaries of the practice in future.

But do you really think Bumpity that it would be practical for the shopowner to advertise the position and spend days going through CVs and interviewing artistic kids and then writing out to the unsuccessful ones, all for the sake of a couple of days work just helping out? Especially if she needs the job done by next Thursday?

Sometimes hiring someone you know is just the practical option.

Just to add that nepotism ultimately really benefits the rich and privileged the most as they have the best networks, the wealth and resources to ensure their kids get all the best opportunities. If the rest of us play along with the system in the hope we can pass on our more limited privilege to our offspring then we are basically endorsing the whole concept and can't therefore complain when our children don't have access to the best opportunities.

@user1485342611
Oh don't get me wrong, I understand that nepotism often represents the more convenient and attractive option for lots of reasons. I don't think someone would go through a formal recruitment process for the type of work you describe, but I think there are often ways we can make the process fairer and practical without resorting to unmitigated nepotism.

You admit you had to work harder than those benefitting from nepotism to get to where you have got to

possibly, but it didn't feel that hard and on the other hand no one had expectations, no one was negative because of my family (I am sure not everybody is a Tony Blair's fan!), there was no pressure.
We can each bring something special to our kids, I don't agree with begrudging what opportunities others can bring to theirs.

Your kid needs work experience, you use your own workplace, you ask your family, your friends and neighbours first. What could be wrong with that?

What is this ‘privilige’ that some posters keep talking about? Are we now saying that anyone who has a job is “priviliged’??

The OP works in IT, not sure how that’s any different to a person who works in a shop and tells someone they know about a vacancy that’s coming up.

This is nothing to do with someone being ‘priviliged’ and having access to a ‘network’ of family and friends who just hand opportunities to them. I think everyone ‘knows’ someone who is in employment and therefore has exactly the same access.

can't therefore complain when our children don't have access to the best opportunities.

it starts when you can't afford to pay for the top and most expensive pre-schools, so I think we are all pretty clear on that!
At best, you can stop the one with limited privileges, you will never stop anything among the super rich - nothing ever applies to them because of various loopholes and we all support it with our love of the Monarchy and the upper class.

I think there's a form of nepotism that's wrong e.g. State companies giving jobs to relatives of senior staff; Managers in private companies promoting their friend's child ahead of more experienced and skilled staff

But there's also a form of nepotism that's just natural and pragmatic e.g. someone who owns their own business hiring their children after they leave school; someone who has a shop asking their neighbour's child if they'd like a Saturday job

The example in the OP falls into the latter category.

Dorset getting relevant work experience in law is vastly more difficult and competitive than in the retail sector, do you genuinely not see that? Surely you’re not being so disingenuous as to pretend all jobs are equal to each other? How do explain why some are more highly paid than others?

I also think if you’re going to put privilege in scare quotes repeatedly (to emphasis how it’s this made up thing that simply doesn’t exist haha pc gone mad etc) you need to learn to spell it so you’ll look less of a dick

Hth