4.1. SETTING LIMITS—ON THE PARENTS

To be sure, companies absolutely must set limits. But establishing the ground rules requires some finesse to avoid alienating millennial employees and their parents. It's best to take a positive approach, emphasizing the need for Junior to become more independent to prosper in his new career. Companies also may have to point out their established human resource procedures so that parents understand that denying them access to private personnel information is nothing personal. It's just standard corporate policy.

For their part, parents certainly should demonstrate greater restraint and discretion in the workplace. They need to remind themselves that they aren't their child's personal agent, representing their darling as if she were a star athlete or entertainer. How far parents can go will depend partly on how much a prospective employer wants their child. But regardless of how aggressively a company might court their son or daughter, parents should use common sense and not make ridiculous demands. They definitely should avoid getting directly involved in employment interviews and negotiations, not only because it's highly inappropriate but also because they could end up killing a possible job offer. Recruiters will certainly get ticked off, and the parents' tactics may reflect negatively on their children. Employers may believe that the young people lack initiative, decisiveness, and the ability to think for themselves—which may well be the case.

Parents should understand that employers are far different from educators. Parents can't bully companies the way they did schools. Through their taxes and tuition, they had a bigger personal stake in schools and colleges. But if parents expect to play a similar role in the workplace, they will only succeed in embarrassing their children and straining the relationship with the employer. If a parent contacts a child's supervisor to criticize the workload or compensation, the child may never regain the boss's respect and support.

Generally, parents will find that companies are adamant about making job interviews and questions about work responsibilities and performance reviews off-limits to family members. International Business Machines Corp. has permitted parents to attend student receptions to learn more about the company, but otherwise it prefers to deal only with the applicants. "We want parents to be comfortable, but we try to stress that there's an appropriate balance we need to strike," says Julie Baskin Brooks, Americas staffing leader for IBM. "If parents call us, we tell them that we appreciate their support, but would prefer to have conversations with their son or daughter. It's a matter of confidentiality."

Some pushy parents can't seem to control themselves and can become downright obnoxious with recruiters. Natalie Griffith, manager of human resource programs at Eaton Corp., an industrial manufacturer, gets calls from parents trying to arrange job interviews for their children. When she tells them the child must set it up himself, some parents get testy, accusing her of not working with them and threatening to call her supervisor. She says she tells parents, "You have to realize that your child will be on his own soon and will have to do things for himself. He needs to take the steps himself to get information about Eaton and ask for an interview."

Steve Canale, recruiting manager at General Electric Co., has received calls from brazen parents attempting to negotiate higher compensation or complaining that their child didn't hear back from the company after her interview. GE doesn't give into parents' demands, but it also doesn't hold their behavior against the prospective employee. "Sometimes kids have absolutely no control over their parents," Canale says. "But we make it clear to parents that we will deal only with their child." He believes helicopter parenting intensified after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as mothers and fathers worried more about safety issues when their children moved to new cities to take jobs.

Perhaps most outrageous are the parents who not only insist on sitting in on their child's job interview but also ask the company to pay for their transportation to its offices. Hard to believe? Well, that has actually happened to recruiters at FedEx Corp. The company doesn't cover parents' expenses, of course, and it also doesn't permit family members in the interview room. But it does let them tour its offices. "Most of our managers are welcoming to parents," says John Leech, FedEx's director of recruitment, "but some complain that we're not hiring the family. I gently remind them that 'Yes, we are hiring the family.' In fact, we want to hire the students' entire tribe of friends and family. We want to become part of their personal network, which has a lot more influence in attracting future talented employees than any recruiting ad."

Millennials may discourage their parents from meddling in their jobs but still find themselves in embarrassing situations. Dan Black, director of Americas campus recruiting at Ernst & Young, recalls a particularly obnoxious call from a summer intern's parents during a company conference in Florida. They were worried about their daughter because she hadn't called them the night before and held the accounting firm responsible. They demanded to know "what kind of program we were running," Black recalls. "When we found their daughter and told her who was on the phone, she was mortified and broke into tears. I would say that they were uberinvolved parents."

Some parental involvement is irritating but relatively harmless. For example, parents call Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to ask which college their child should attend to have a better shot at joining the investment banking firm. Goldman recruiters also say that more parents are pressuring employees they know at the firm to recommend their children for jobs.

Some parents may keep a lower profile and influence their children's career decisions from the sidelines. But companies can still clearly sense their presence. When they hear questions from students about 401K plans and other benefits that many young people don't usually ask much about, they figure that Mom and Dad are actively involved. In fact, Ernst & Young has begun including more information about retirement plans and other benefits in its job-offer packages because it expects parents to scrutinize every detail. It also puts information about job opportunities at the firm on a computer memory stick and tells students they can pass it along to parents when they ask how the job search is going.

Patty Phillips, executive director of career management at the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester, believes that school career services offices and companies can minimize the stress if they learn to anticipate parents' questions and objections. She knows that she could coach a student on the ideal career path without making much headway until Mom and Dad think it's a swell idea, too. "You have to arm yourself by giving students reasons for the advice that they can later repeat to Mom or Dad," Phillips says.

Occasionally, parents call the Simon School worried that their children are messing up salary and benefit negotiations with employers. "In such cases, we have to worry about confidentiality and can't share specifics," Phillips says, "but we can give the salary range our graduates in investment banking received last year or the average signing bonuses given to those who went into brand management."