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.

‘Misguided notion of fairness’

‘Professionally offended’

Is anyone playing tosspot bingo, because i think we have a line here.

Yes let’s just watch social mobility grind to a halt in this country and the wealth gap increase and shrug our shoulders and pretend that there’s literally nothing that can be done about it. I wonder which side of the line the people who trot guff like this out (and their kids) fall on. oh wait no i don’t

Loving the grammar/spellcheck! My apologies...autocorrect.

Clearly I don’t think all jobs are equal, or should be paid equally either. However, my point is that this isn’t relevant legal work experience...it’s basic data input.

The references to only some people having access to networks and opportunities is ridiculous. We all know people who have jobs, if you want a couple of weeks of minimum wage, unskilled work (in the OPs words) then we can all access those opportunities through recommendations.

MissVanjie

But this isn't 'relevant experience in law'. It's a boring data entry job requiring no skill, that will only take a couple of weeks.

If you were recruiting for a law post, or a place on a law degree, and two candidates were right down to the wire would you consider this work or shelf stacking more relevant userstringofnumbers?

"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"

How rude.

@Dorsetdays
I disagree with you and think that a lot of young people would struggle to get this kind of work depending on location etc. Why do you think the other mum was annoyed? I imagine it's because there isn't an abundance of these types of opportunities around and she quite fancied her kids having a go at getting one.

Yeah my auto correct spells things totally wrong sometimes as well

MissVanjie

I would consider neither particularly relevant.

Do you seriously think someone would be given an advantage for a legal post on the basis of a couple of weeks doing data entry?

If it was that down to the wire I'd start looking at exam results, activities they'd been involved in at school or college or something like that to see if there was anything to separate them.

MissVanjie

so you will by principle always refuse a job offered to you by a friend before the company advertises, you will always refuse to accept a job for your own children, you will never ask friends and family for work experience and if your business needs something doing by a student, you will refuse to consider your own children first but you will pay for an add online, you won't even consider putting the add in your kids school first?

Who believes any of that!

Yes i am being rude so best lawyer up and sue me huh

Claiming that people are ‘being ridiculous’ for rightly and realistically pointing out that some jobs are better than others and that doing something that is the dictionary definition of nepotism is in fact nepotism, and that this is part of a system where nice middle class people and their kids get to carry on being nice and comfy while a different strata of society finds itself increasingly shut out from opportunities to get on and improve their lot, which is having real impact (eg life expectancy falling for the first time since the advent of the welfare state) is pretty fucking rude too. As is the implication that none of the above is worth taking any time or trouble to address or even acknowledge.

If anyone is genuinely confused about what privilege is, just read this thread

Yes, I also think it's nepotism. I guess it's common? I certainly benefited from it when I was younger, despite it having nothing to do with the career I was aiming for.

Started of as short bits of work to do special, unskilled data projects over the weekends here and there. Then I was seen as a trustworthy teen in the company, and offered longer contracts to do some actual stuff with a bit of training on the side. It made my CV look as though I had been a go-getter teen, when the reality was my dad casually asking me if I'd be interested in X and Y, and if so, just give his boss a call. (And for my DB the same situation gradually turned into a long career in the same company. I know he's good at his work and wouldn't have been employed if he hadn't been, but it's the opportunity...) I'm not complaining for the benefit personally, but yes it's unfair for those without similar opportunities.

What on earth are you talking about fork?

Why are you so defensive about even acknowledging that unfair barriers and advantages exist?

That’s all i’m saying

There is a very middle class tendency to pat oneself on the back and feel v smug about how hard one/one’s children work, when in fact if yr middle class, the odds are ever in your favour. The fact that people are shitting their ears off with fury at this even being acknowledged as a thing is very telling.

MissVanjie ridiculous AND hypocritical.

I bet that the mother from the OP wouldn't have utter one word of complain if the OP had offered her kid a job too. People are not unhappy about the actual system, they are moaning when they are not part of it.

Why are you so defensive about even acknowledging that unfair barriers and advantages exist?

I believe my exact words were" life isn't fair"....
I am working damn hard to get my kids extra advantages, why on earth would I bother working otherwise! Choosing our current house to put them in our chosen school was the first step! That's what every single parent does! (or decent parents anyway).

The fact that people are shitting their ears off with fury at this even being acknowledged as a thing is very telling.

the fact that you need to use this kind of language is also very telling. Just saying.

Some of you are barking mad if you think this would go down on anyone's CV as a 'boring data entry job'. Want to know what these kids will really say?

I was employed by a professional services firm on a fixed term contract to undertake manual data entry for the purposes of maintaining a client database. This role placed me in a position of trust in which I was required to understand and fulfil the requirements of client confidentiality. I worked efficiently and with attention to detail in a professional environment where record keeping was of great importance. I quickly became familiar with the use of a new IT system and was able to navigate this successfully.

That would be a truthful and reasonable account of the job, and it's going to look a damn sight more impressive than a young person who couldn't get that experience. Not to mention the fact that these kids will now be able to ask employees of that law firm for professional references - another useful bonus.

Again, this clearly isn't the most nefarious and extravagant form of nepotism the world has ever seen. It makes sense why, under the circumstances, the jobs were allocated in this way. These things happen. But for the sake of social mobility we seriously have to acknowledge that there is a real advantage for kids who have friends or relatives who can set them up with work experience, and to question whether there are reasonable and proportionate steps we can take to level out the playing field.

See now we’ve moved on to ‘anyone would do this if they had a chance so best to do it first’ and then a little further along down the road to ‘if you don’t or can’t give your dc an advantage then you are not a decent parent’

These little increments, this slow creep down the road from ‘this is just how things are’ to ‘these people are nice/trustworthy/decent/deserving’ vs ‘these people aren’t’ and its attendant apathy is how we’ve ended up sitting watching in horror as the most powerful country in the world locks babies in cages fyi

Because some people are just naturally better than others, and people are ‘being ridiculous’ if they point out that this is a) unfair and b) addressable

“
Again, this clearly isn't the most nefarious and extravagant form of nepotism the world has ever seen. It makes sense why, under the circumstances, the jobs were allocated in this way. These things happen. But for the sake of social mobility we seriously have to acknowledge that there is a real advantage for kids who have friends or relatives who can set them up with work experience, and to question whether there are reasonable and proportionate steps we can take to level out the playing field.”

Man i wish i could make this point as sanely as you 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

“the fact that you need to use this kind of language is also very telling. Just saying.”

Mn allows swears; some hunnier sites asterisk them out. Are you new?

Mn allows swears; some hunnier sites asterisk them out. Are you new?
Just pointed out your interesting choice of vocabulary.

You are conveniently refusing to answer any of my questions but unsuccessfully try to wind me up, is it because I am right hun?

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.

Wow. That comparison is almost Godwin's Law @MissVanjie

MyOtherUser - Yes absolutely any sensible person would put that on their CV. And any decent graduate employer would see through it in seconds. Honestly, I'd be far more impressed by a student who'd worked in a supermarket throughout their degree and still come out with a 2:1 than one who'd done two weeks holiday money work at mum's office.

I got my first office job the same way - a family friend was a solicitor who needed a month’s worth of extra admin help in the uni vac. Then my lecturer Dad got me a summer job doing university admin that led, in a somewhat roundabout way, to my career. But he also taught me how to make the most of those opportunities, how to ask for a reference, who to speak to in order to find out if there were any jobs going. This is definitely a middle class perk, but I’d have a hard time dismissing it because this is how people get on in life. It’s an advantage to long hours, hard work and maybe not seeing your family as much as you’d like.

I'd be far more impressed by a student who'd worked in a supermarket throughout their degree and still come out with a 2:1 than one who'd done two weeks holiday money work at mum's office.

Most employers I work with are not impressed by supermarket work however, and as long as the cv doesn't state "mummy's office" a relevant experience will always look better.
you could argue that you will take the job a lot more seriously if the result reflect on your parents...