How to manage your parents during the graduate job hunt

The ‘rents – god bless ‘em – sometimes can be hell. They try their best, but during your graduate job search you may just want them out of the way.

Your parents may not realise that you can do this yourself, and you are not a little baby any more. But equally you might not realise that, properly managed, they can be a real asset in the graduate careers race.

We’ve put together this little guide to help you figure out how to make the most of their good intentions.

Make sure parents and employers never meet

This one is important; graduate employers like to meet potential recruits who they can mould in their own image. Nothing undermines your bid to come across as a sharp, professional self-starter more than a pair of significantly less malleable parents telling embarrassing stories about the things you got up to when you were five.

This is a common gripe from employers at recruitment fairs, who have seen potential recruits’ chances crumble when a parent screams their name from the other end of the hall. There’s nothing worse than a student who needs their hand holding before they can approach a stand. Well, actually there is: a student who lets their parents approach the stand for them.

If you really do need moral support, take an equally fresh and promising friend. This will have the recruiter thinking of potential teams or competitive rivalries that they could exploit. If you are really devious you could take a friend who is nearly as promising, or slightly less interested, ensuring that they don’t outshine you.

The one-and-only exception to the ‘never shall the twain meet’ rule is if your parents have contacts. If they can provide that all important leg-up or work experience opportunity, then let them work their magic. It is important, however, that you take control of the relationship as soon as possible. You will want to seem as if you are pulling the strings, not clutching on coat-tails.

Get them working for you

Very naturally, parents want the best for their children, and there are ways you can use this to your advantage.

Get them to check the papers and websites. If your parents are anxious for you, and keen to contribute, then this is the perfect way to get them involved. Be sure that they know what to look for though; most parents would keel over in surprise if you told them banks like recruiting arts graduates.

Ask them to double-check your CV and covering letters. No matter how many times you check it over yourself, a second pair of eyes always helps. This can also be a bonus if you have jargon-filled sections which an employer from a different area might not understand.

Ask for a room call. If you have an early morning interview, you will want to make sure you leave the house on time. Many parents will be happy to make sure you’ve woken up and dressed properly if they think it will help your chances. What is more, in the age of mobile phones you can even get this to work from long range.

Get them to look over your Facebook account

A scary prospect for some, as quite a few people would rather not have their parents viewing every aspect of their private lives. Think about it this way though; if you can’t let your parents see it, what will a potential employer think if they Googled your name?

In short, you will need to un-tag every drunken photo, un-friend every dubious acquaintance, un-‘like’ every contentious topic and delete every profanity-strewn post that a casual browser could come across if they were searching for your name in any of the usual locations.

Reassurances and delaying tactics

Sometimes it can just take time to get the right job. But if your parents have seen weeks of economic inactivity turn into months, then it may be harder to persuade them that everything is as it should be. Key to this is feeding them that positive line before they have to ask. Here are some things you can do to keep them off your back:

Do something with the time. It can help massively to have some kind of justification for the apparent lack of action. Volunteering, teaching yourself a skill and having regular weekly activities are all good ways of keeping busy. If you can make this tie in with your degree, or your intended career, or both, then so much the better, as it will help to fill in CV gaps when you meet your future employer.

Having a ‘job search time’. If your parents know you have a regular time of the day or week for looking for jobs then they are less likely to ask you when you are going to get round to doing it. You can even put the same kind of restrictions on that time that you might have applied to revision: not to be disturbed, access to internet and newspapers, coffee and biscuits every half hour, etc.

Proactive-ify your room. Wall-charts, calendars, planners, copies of TARGETjobs sector publications scattered across the floor: these are all nice visual ways of letting your parents know that you are taking care of business. They might just help you keep yourself motivated too.

Let them know when things do happen. While all of the above can be reassuring for them, unless they actually know you are responding to ads and getting interviews and so on, they’ll never really know whether you are looking for jobs or not. Let them know you’ve applied, not heard back, been rejected, got an interview, whatever. That way you can keep them involved and avoid the nagging and guilt trips.

Helpful phrases and statistics

If you find yourself being interrogated in every conversation, then you might want to throw in some of our useful distracting phrases and statistics:

• ‘Hourglass market’ – a popular theory in the recruitment world right now which states that, in the future, there will be lots of high and low-skilled jobs, but little in the middle. Essentially: it’s good to have a degree.
• ‘I was thinking of applying for this particular scheme, but the applications don’t open until this date.’ This can be useful for schemes that open in January or February, and can be deadly when supplemented with ‘…so in the meantime I am gaining experience and building up my relevant skills base.’
• Unemployment among recent graduates has remained fairly steady over the last five classes of graduates. At most it has risen 2.3% point in that time, and has consistently stayed below 10%.
• A recent survey by SHL found that 64% of companies would be willing to help a graduate recruit repay all or some of their student loan, in order to attract the best candidates.

So that’s how you deal with your parents

You’re good. You can do it. You have the power. Even better than that, you have gained an additional skill in the process: people management. You have learned to manage a team, get a co-operative mentality going, you have delegated tasks, learned how to manage expectations and much more. These skills are sought after by graduate recruiters in fields ranging from management to advertising. So now you’ve got plenty of options. Nice.

Source: Targetjobs.co.uk, Tuesday 28th June 2011