Father Knows Best? Maybe Not In Current Job
Apr 10th, 2005 | By Bill | Category: Employment NewsFather Knows Best? Maybe Not In Current Job
Now is the time when college kids who haven’t landed jobs yet become increasingly desperate. As they hone their resumes and cover letters, they often turn to their parents for advice.
Parents oblige, with good intentions. But they aren’t always the best source of wisdom on these matters. Often, the advice parents give is outdated, irrelevant or just plain lousy.
Even parents with successful careers aren’t necessarily expert job hunters. And many parents don’t have much experience in hiring or recruiting. So they sometimes pass along the mistaken assumptions or suggest things that might be appropriate for their own industry or level of seniority but that aren’t right for the jobs their kids are pursuing.
Most of these parents do not have any relevant particular background that would enable them to give decent advice, says Brad Karsh, president of JobBound, a Chicago-based career-counseling service. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard, but my mom told me to put that on my resume’ or my dad told me to include that.’
Karsh recently advised a college senior hoping to land a marketing job. Karsh helped her craft a resume. A few weeks later, she came back with major revisions to the version Karsh had suggested. It turned out she had shown it to her dad, who insisted he knew better.
Every single thing that I had done, her father questioned, Karsh said. Figuring her dad must be a job-hunting expert to have such strong opinions, he asked, So, your dad must work in HR or recruiting? Turns out he didn’t. Her dad didn’t have any experience in marketing, either, the woman’s intended field.
Some of the dad’s advice suggested he didn’t recognize how competitive the job market is for college students today. The father, for instance, had told the woman to exclude many details of her work experience from her resume. Given the fact that one out of 100 people actually get the interview, I don’t know that I’d save anything for the interview, he says.
Her father also advised to keep some of accomplishments vague, in hopes that the hiring manager might assume her achievements were even better than they were. Karsh warned that skeptical managers were unlikely to assume the woman had been wildly successful. A recruiter is going to assume the worst, he says.
Peg Hendershot, director of Career Vision, a Glen Ellyn, Ill., career-counseling service, says some parents go a step further they write their kids’ resumes themselves. While this might result in impressive, professional-sounding resumes, the tactic often backfires in interviews.
Sometimes parents exaggerate their children’s responsibilities. But the kids can’t back up these boasts when they discuss their actual job duties. Other times, parents describe supposed achievements in business-buzzword terms that their kids don’t understand. So the interview ends up a total flop, Hendershot says.
Marc Karasu, vice president of marketing at Yahoo Inc.’s HotJobs career site, says parents often tell kids, Just be yourselfin interviews. But recent college graduates have so little experience interviewing, they need more concrete help. He suggests that parents stage mock interviews with their children so that they can get a sense of what questions they might be asked and how their answers sound. What might sound good as you rehearse it in your head might not sound good when you say it out loud, he says.
Marc Karasu, vice president of marketing at Yahoo Inc.’s HotJobs career site, says proud parents sometimes tell their children to list mountains of accomplishments on multipage resumes. Usually, this is inappropriate: Older, more experienced job seekers who have longer work histories typically can keep their resumes to one or two pages. Karasu recalls one young woman who was job hunting after taking a year off to travel following college. Her mother encouraged her to list every pit stop she had taken on her travels, Karasu says. The result was an inappropriately exhaustive four-page resume.
Parents sometimes give bad advice about interviews, too. Marc Karasu, vice president of marketing at Yahoo Inc.’s HotJobs career site, says parents often tell kids, Just be yourself. But recent college graduates have so little experience interviewing, they need more concrete help. He suggests that parents stage mock interviews with their children so that they can get a sense of what questions they might be asked and how their answers sound. What might sound good as you rehearse it in your head might not sound good when you say it out loud, he says.