At their best, parents can be enormously helpful to your career development. They can be inspiring when you're trying to pick a major, supportive when your internship isn't going quite as well as you'd hoped and encouraging when you're trying to land your first real job after graduation.
But at their worst, some parents go too far in their efforts to help you, thus hurting your prospects, not to mention your self-respect. Consider these troubling scenarios -- all of them real:
- One set of parents insisted on accompanying their son to his appointment with a counselor at the campus career center so they could tell the counselor what their clearly confused son "wanted" to major in.
- One employer reports he got a call from the father of a recent graduate who had been offered an entry-level job with the organization. Dad wanted to negotiate his daughter's salary and benefits.
- Another employer reported when she walked out of her office to introduce herself to the college senior interviewing for a position, she was surprised to see the outstretched hand of the candidate's mother as well.
- A temporary staffing agency manager says he's recently received phone calls from about 10 parents, all of them touting the skills of their college-age sons and daughters and urging they be assigned to key temp jobs.
- At one major university, some anxious parents have tried to keep tabs on their children's interviewing activities by requesting access -- unsuccessfully -- to the school's on-campus interview scheduling system.
If you're like many of today's college students, you turn to your parents for all kinds of advice. After all, your parents have much to share with you about both their successes and failures, and you can gain valuable insights from their experience and advice.
But there's a fine -- or maybe not so fine -- line between parents who help and parents who smother when your career development is at stake. Where is that boundary? Ask yourself the following questions:
Who's Initiating Your Career-Development Activities?
You've reached the stage in your life when you need to take over as the manager of your own career. Yes, your parents may make unsolicited suggestions once in a while that turn out to be helpful, and that's wonderful. But are they dragging you along by initiating most of those career-development activities themselves? If so, that's a sign of over-involvement on their part -- and under-involvement on yours.
Are Your Parents with You -- Literally?
If your parents insist on accompanying you to career counseling appointments, job fairs, internship or job interviews, they're not doing you any favors. It's time to respectfully declare: "I appreciate your willingness to help, but I need to do this on my own."
Are Your Parents Doing End Arounds on You?
Did your parents contact your academic advisor or a campus career counselor before you did? Are Mom and Dad contacting prospective employers on your behalf -- without telling you? Of course, some parents will mention your career concerns or job search activities to friends and acquaintances. It's when they actively pull an end around on you that they're out of line.
Are You Resisting Your Parents' Advice Just to Spite Them?
When you feel backed into a corner, it's human nature to resist. Do you find yourself dismissing whatever career-related ideas your parents dish out, even those that might be potentially helpful to you out of spite? If so, it's time to establish new boundaries with each other.
Developing into your own person isn't easy for you or your parents. But when it comes to your career, you need to be in charge. Parental guidance is fine, but parental dominance is not.
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