You have probably already read more than one of our posts about howparents who live under the same roofwith their adult children complain that they do not want to participate in managing the household and don’t even make a financial contribution. Well, it’s time to take the next step – it turns out that young people need the support of the older generation when looking for work too.
And if you thought that we were talking about plain old nepotism, when parental connections help their offspring get a prestigious job, then you are definitely mistaken. What if I told you that many recent college grads bring their own parents to job interviews?
More info:Intelligent
Image credits:Eliott Reyna (not the actual photo)
It turns out that 1 in 5 employers have faced young jobseekers bringing parents to job interviews
Don’t believe me? Too bad. And here’s why – late last year, Intelligent.com, an online magazine specializing in education, student life and work,published the results of its broad survey. As part of the study, 800 U.S. managers, directors, and executives who are somehow involved in hiring were surveyed.
Now prepare to be surprised. First, 39% of respondents claim that in the hiring process, if the question arises of choosing between a recent college graduate and an older candidate, then, all other things being equal, they would prefer someone older. Various options are put forth: offering the candidate a higher salary, allowing them to work remotely or in a hybrid format.
Image credits:Intelligent.com
It has even come to the point that if previously, the issue of overqualified age candidates was, if not a red flag, then a significant problem for jobseekers, then now 46% of surveyed employers and HR workers are ready to hire an overqualified person – just to avoid working with Gen Z.
The question is, why? Well, for example, because, according to the same survey, 1 in 5 employers have recently had the experience of interviewing a young person who brought their parents to the interview. Moreover, typically, the initiator of such a situation is not always the youngster themselves. Often it is the parents who insist on their presence during the interview.
The issue could be related to the phenomenon of ‘helicopter parenting’, in which parents are overly involved in their adult children’s lives
Most likely, we are dealing with so-called helicopter parenting – a term that refers to overly involved and protective parents who not only actively interfere in all their children’s interactions, but also make decisions for them, try to help them achieve their goals, and remove obstacles in their path.
Image credits:Christina @ wocintechchat.com (not the actual photo)
One of the reasons for this effect might be also the recent pandemics, with millions of students lacking social interactions
“In many ways, the problem lies in the COVID-19 pandemic, when students almost all over the world found themselves for at least a year, and in fact for several years, deprived of the opportunity to interact with other people in the way familiar to all previous generations,” says Olga Kopylova,Ph.D., associate professor of economics at Odessa National Maritime University, to whomBored Pandareached out for a comment here.
“Historically, university is not only about acquiring skills and knowledge, but also about socialization. Communication with other students, the experience of independent life on campus, skills to overcome problems and obstacles on their way – students of previous generations invariably faced all this and, with varying degrees of success, learned to overcome everything.”
Many employers also opened up that they had fired a recent college grad at least once
And last, but not least, nearly half of the employers who took part in the survey had fired a recent college graduate at least once. According to business representatives, these young employees often can’t manage the workload, are late to meetings and hand assignments in late.
At the same time, new employees are characterized as entitled (63% of respondents), too easily offended (58%), clearly lacking professionalism (57%), not responding well to feedback (55%) and having poor communication skills (52%). No, it’s not worth saying that their businesses were simply unlucky with new employees – we know too well many examples of bossesbeing entitled, sometimesincompetentandoffended easilyas well, and any process in society is always a two-way street.
It seems it’s not only an issue in business, but society as a whole
On the other hand, the issue is not only about business. For example, former UK defense secretary Ben Wallace, in a recent interview on LBC,directly statedthat Britain’s Armed Forces recruitment effort is in crisis because Generation Z is not signing up to serve. “Generation Z is not joining the Armed Forces in the way my generation did,” said Mr. Wallace. “And, post-Covid, skill shortages in engineering and all sorts of things are a real challenge.”
Who knows, perhaps our society is really entering a difficult stage of its development, when young people are not ready to shoulder the burden that all their predecessors had to bear? Perhaps, because in fact, everything in this life is quite possible. On the other hand, I would like to end with one more quote.
Well, some things don’t change over time. And this, you know, is probably the only thing that inspires hope…
Some commenters are strongly convinced this is mostly about parenting as people have raised the whole ‘entitled generation’
Image credits:Clem Onojeghuo (not the actual photo)
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