Parents job hunting for their adult offspring

[Foxinthechickencoop]

Just don’t!
I work in recruitment / HR and have done in various sectors For many years.
We seem to get a constant stream of parents of young adults contacting us for jobs for their offspring who have just left university, or college or another job etc. I just want to say, the minute someone’s parent contacts me instead of the person themselves alarm bells ring. I would assume the young person in question is pretty unmotivated and the parents are worrying they are just sat in their room / drifting and want them to get a job. But essentially if you aren’t interested enough to enquire about jobs yourself, then you won’t be the right fit for the workplace.
Only exception might be if a parent was a customer somewhere and saw they were hiring and said, ooh I’ll tell my son to apply.
I say son because it’s always boys. In 15 years I think it’s been one girl.

Sorry rant over. Just been triggered by DH receiving a text from a customer of his asking if he could give any work to their 24 year old son who has been working in tourism but now out of work. Why can’t he ask himself?!!!! We don’t want to employ a 24 year old who needs his parents to do his work for him 🤷🏼‍♀️

Prepared to have by head bitten off.

Just been triggered by DH receiving a text from a customer of his asking if he could give any work to their 24 year old son who has been working in tourism but now out of work. Why can’t he ask himself?!!!! We don’t want to employ a 24 year old who needs his parents to do his work for him

I think it's ok for someone to ask a well known contact if they know of anything. But if they then say "yes we might have" then the 24 year old should do the legwork!

Quite right OP. I've found every one of my jobs myself. From a weekend job at 16 onwards.

I don't have a problem with a parent, if it's someone I know, asking if I know of any opportunities. But that's as far as it goes. I have occasionally had an applicant claim that their parent did their CV! How can I tell what their writing skills are like if a parent does this?

Hmmm....the first job I got was through my mum chatting to her NDN who mentioned her DD & SIL had taken over a market stall. Mum said “If he’s looking for someone to work weekends Chrissy needs a job”. I would have no idea they’d got the stall as I didn’t chat to NDNs as a 16 year old student.

With that, my parents were a bit...odd about jobs. Wouldn’t let me work till I was 16 (except a paper round) as it was ‘illegal’ but then the minute I turned 16 wanted me to get a weekend job in a shop or something as they were fed up of me asking for money but were surprised that I didn’t get anywhere, even though most of my peers had some sort of work experience by then already. So God bless my NDN!

Any application I get from a parent goes in the bin

I agree OP. Used to work in retail and we would get so many parents handing CVs in on behalf of their teenagers. One that I remember, the mum handed the CV in while the daughter stood next to her not saying a word. The daughter did get an interview though, and within days the mother phoned up constantly asking if her daughter had got the job, even though my boss was still doing interviews. She didn't get the job. I've no idea if that was factor but I can imagine it didn't help.

I worked from age 13, then all the way through uni as well. Got my own job, caught the bus to the town and back, managed a full 8 hour day. Occasional help from parents if the rural bus service failed.

But how might posters on this thread suggest I help my teenager. They have a severe learning disability - so any written communication from them - if not checked by me - would have a lot of errors. Spell check only works if your typed word is fairly close to the actual word. They would struggle with a stressful situation, not great with maths, cant follow multiple instructions. So I have made them sound like worst employee of the year - but they are careful, hardworking, friendly, willing. They need to learn how to work like everyone else. We are not quite at the stage of adult workplaces yet but the same problems will apply.

I completely agree OP. It’s odd and makes me think they are lacking, l got all of my jobs and it was harder with no internet. It literally was physically handing out paper CV’s. I freely l admit l cringe when l get a CV for a role where l work, from a 21 or 22 year old and they’ve never had a job

I agree with you OP.

I got my first full time job when I was 17, right out of school.i applied for jobs all on my own and it took me a few months, but I did it all on my own.

I've never needed to ask for help, I've always wanted to do it myself and I've been consistently employed for nearly 2 decades now (aside from when I took a few years off to go to university).

I agree, OP, and I think it's actually worse if it's a business contact asking as it comes with a level of expectation. My boss was delighted that a colleague has suggested her DD for an upcoming position that I'll line manage - boss said she's glad that we'll have at least one good candidate even though she's never met colleague's DD/seen her CV! I'll have to put my foot down at any preferential hiring because it goes against everything I believe in!

We had this, but internally - the boss of the organisation sent a message to my team asking if his friend's DC could do work experience with our team. We have an advertised week-long work experience scheme, through which we get a maximum of four students a year (small team, too busy for any more) and they are chosen on merit, not because they are the boss' friend's DC. Had they applied direct like everyone else, they would have been considered, but we said no because we had already selected the full four.

But how might posters on this thread suggest I help my teenager. They have a severe learning disability - so any written communication from them - if not checked by me - would have a lot of errors.

@spongedog your situation with your teenager is completely different. They do need your support. Depending on their capability and talent I would recommend you research job vacancies in public sector organisations as IME they are very supportive of all disabled people including those with profound disabilities. There is always work to be done. We have a colleague who has very limited sight and hearing, and she does usability software testing on adaptive software (the type of software that enables screen magnification and texttype to convert sound to text etc.).

My kids would kill me if I did this, I wasn't even allowed to phone the school after age 16.