In praise of the helicopter parent

Published by Ryan Healy on May 8th, 2007 in Recruiting | 7 Comments

Recently, I have seen a slew of articles about helicopter parents. Parents of millennials are becoming very involved in the job search process. These parents feel they have the right to call their child's company to discuss benefits and relocation packages and even negotiate salary. I think this is great.When Brady Quinn, the star quarterback from Notre Dame, was finally drafted by the Browns in last weeks NFL draft, I can guarantee his agent was on the phone with the team negotiating Brady's salary, benefits and any other perks an NFL quarterback might receive.

An NFL quarterback, or any athlete for that matter, would never dream of negotiating for themselves. Agents have the experience and maturity to know what their client deserves and they have the practiced skills to negotiate the best deal. Why are newly minted college grads expected to do the wheeling and dealing involved in a job search, with little to no guidance?

Read the rest at The Brazen Careerist

Leave your thoughts here. (7 responses)

This article´s comments All Employee Evolution comments

Lauraa

May 8th, 2007 at 10:31 pm

Guys,
I think you are making a huge leap in your logic to compare an agent to parents negotiating one's pay package. I am a millenial. I am looking for a job. While I may discuss details of any offers I receive with my family, mainly because I am living at home right now, in no way would I even dream of asking my parents to get on the phone and speak to an employer. They, in fact, would refuse to. Do you have any examples of when this worked for anyone?

Recruiting Bloggers.com

May 9th, 2007 at 9:42 am

I Want A Stage Mom

Sez Gen Y Spokesman. Parents of previous times were simple, uneducated folk. Indeed many of them could not speak proper English. Gen Y's parents however are the products of the post-secondary school education explosion of the sixties. Never before hav…

Ryan Healy

May 9th, 2007 at 10:41 am

Lauraa,

Agreed, we are making a huge leap in comparing parents to agents, but something needs to be done. I would never let my parents get on the phone and negotiate for me either, but if this was accepted and companies involved parents in the FIRST job process, then I would gladly invite them in.

For now, it can only lead to problems, but as it becomes accepted it could be used as a great tool. The main point of the article is, entry level workers need to be appreciated more and we are in search of ways to do this. A little parental help could be a solution. Do you have any others?

-Ryan

Ryan Healy

May 9th, 2007 at 10:44 am

For those who don't know, the Recruiting Animal from recruitingbloggers.com has been writing about how unoriginal our generation is for weeks now. But you know what, I think he is starting to warm to us.

Animal,

Great job giving us some traffic. We are going to add you to the blogroll.

-Ryan

A Generation of Paradox « Little Red Suit

Sep 19th, 2007 at 12:11 am

[...] want guidance but to do things our own way. We want to be safe but take risks. We want to be loyal to employers [...]

Liz

Dec 3rd, 2008 at 10:17 pm

Sorry, I can not agree with this. If I was an employer and a newly hired employees mother called me to negotiate salary, I would think twice about having their child on staff. If every time there was a problem at work I would expect to get a call from their parents…that just wouldn't work for me.

Another solution might be to better train college, or high school graduates. Perhaps make a course on business processes required, instead of an optional hour long seminar in the middle of the week.