Welcome SU Parents to Summer Preview Orientation!
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Test your career
knowledge-Click
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for quiz (14-15
Great/12-13-OK/9-11-Good/7-8-Needs
help/6 and below-Not going to
talk about it!)
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Services We Provide:
Parent Mentor Network-I need your help!
What
We Did This Past Year
The highlights of the 2011-2012 academic year
are listed below. The number of students we serve, services
we offer and partnerships we forge continue to increase every year. The
overall numbers tell some of the story:
First Destination Survey-May 2012
In response to: What best describes your post-graduation status as of
right now?
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Click
here to view this year's
graduation data
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Click
here to view some of the student dangers for your son/daughter
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Student's today
Power Point
Resources
- Click
here for motivating
students-pp
- Click
here for parent power point
 Youth
In The Office: Are Your Parents Meddling In Your
Career?
-True Tales Of A 26-Year-Old Receptionist Jenna
Goudreau Forbes Staff- Youth In The Office: How
I Found Career-Changing Mentors
Ryan Webb, an executive recruiter at Access
Group in Salt Lake City, Utah, specializing in
accounting and financial services hiring,
thought it was a strange anomaly when, four
months ago, a college senior in his early 20s
came in for a preliminary interview with his
mother.
“The mother was quite overbearing,” Webb
recalls. “She was insistent and demanding to sit
in on the interview. The son seemed embarrassed.
I had to ask her to wait outside.”
Then Webb started receiving calls from parents.
One father phoned to ask about the status of
his child’s resume, admitted that he was the one
who submitted it, and then asked for sample
interview questions. Another time, he was
conducting a phone screening, and the
interviewee’s mother jumped on the line and
started interjecting and answering questions for
her son. By the time January rolled around and a
candidate showed up with her mother, father,
aunt and cousin in tow, he knew it went beyond a
passing oddity.
Today’s young people face more than a tough
economy and stagnating wages. Many will also
contend with overprotective helicopter parents,
who continue hovering through their college
years and into their first jobs. And if a
parent’s good intentions cross the line, they
often inadvertently ruin their child’s career
prospects.
A Michigan State University survey of 725
employers in 2007 discovered that nearly one
third (31%) had seen a parent submit a resume on
their child’s behalf (sometimes without their
knowledge) and over a quarter (26%) had been
contacted by a parent promoting their child’s
candidacy.
Recruiters and career counselors say this
phenomenon has intensified over the last few
years. In a recent survey of over 1,300 senior
managers by staffing firm OfficeTeam, executives
recounted the most unusual or surprising
behavior they’d heard of or witnessed from the
parent of a job seeker. They told of parents’
requests to attend the interview, stopping
hiring managers at the grocery store to plead
their child’s case, asking a politician to
pressure the interviewer, following up after the
interview to ask how the child did, calling to
ask about the salary and work schedule, and
inquiring as to why the child was not hired.
“More and more I’m seeing parents meddling in
their children’s college education or career,”
says Tim Elmore, founder of Growing Leaders, an
Atlanta-based non-profit that mentors and
develops leadership skills in young people.
“They are disabling kids.”
Elmore believes over the last 30 years parents
have increasingly prioritized their children’s
safety and self-esteem, often shielding them
from fear and failure. Those born after 1990,
he says, are especially at risk of what he deems
“artificial maturity”—being overexposed to
information and underexposed to real-life
experience. Before cell phones, a college
student might have called home once a week. Now
they talk to parents multiple times a day, and
increasingly move back home after graduation.
“The parents think: I cook for you and do your
laundry; I’ll go to the job interview too.”
Elmore recently spoke with one employer who said
he needed a therapist because the new recruits’
parents were driving him crazy. He’d dealt with
one Atlanta mother who thought she was her
22-year-old son’s agent. When the child first
secured the job, she tried to get involved with
salary and benefit negotiations. Six months into
the job, she showed up unannounced to ask why he
hadn’t received a raise. “Employers are just
baffled,” Elmore says, “and the kid ends up
looking like a bonehead.”
Career coach Rebecca Weingarten speculates that
over-involved parents may want their children to
achieve something they weren’t able to or could
be wrought with fear for their child’s job
prospects in a down economy. Especially if they
have invested years of their time and tens of
thousands on their education, they may push to
achieve what they believe is an acceptable
return on that investment. However, it
negatively impacts the child in 99.9% of the
cases, she says.
“It does hurt the candidate’s chances of getting
a job,” says Webb, the recruiter. “I can’t
present someone to a client if I think the
parent’s going to come.”
 He
notes that it puts the young person in a bad
situation because they may feel as if they have
very little leverage. If a parent paid for their
education or allows them to live at home, they
might consider it disrespectful to ask them to
back off. At the same time, deep down they might
be relieved when a parent steps in because it
postpones the scary responsibilities of
adulthood. But someone needs to draw the line.
Elmore agrees that once a child goes to college
or seeks full-time employment, the parent needs
to make the transition from supervisor to
consultant. If the parent is not establishing
appropriate boundaries, then the child must.
“Make decisions with long-term outcomes in
mind,” he advises. “Ask yourself: If I let Mom
control my job search, am I prolonging my
childhood? Will it hurt my chances of securing
the job I want?” Because parents, like their
children, only have as much power as they’re
given.
Parents Guide to Career Development
July 1, 2011 at 5:00 am by Tom Denham
I love parents, but they make terrible career
counselors. They simply can not provide
objective advice because of the emotional
attachment to their children. However, parents
can help by listening and by being
nonjudgmental. Here are 10 other ways.
1. Encourage your child to visit the career
center (and you go too!) – Next time you visit
campus, drop into the Career Center and meet
with a professional. When your son or daughter
is feeling anxious about his/her future, offer a
business card and say, “Please call this person.
They can help you.” Many students use their
first semester to “settle into” college life,
and so perhaps the second term is the optimal
time to gently prompt them to go. Whether your
son or daughter uses the services or not, you
are paying for them!
Ask him/her (in an off-handed way), “Have you
visited the Career Center?” If you hear, “You
only go there when you are a senior!” then
reassure them that career services are not just
for seniors. The sooner he/she becomes familiar
with the staff and resources the better prepared
he/she will be. Career Centers offer a full
range of services including: mock interviews,
alumni career networks, workshops, recruiting
programs, advising, and career books/handouts on
job searching and graduate school.
2. Advise your student to write a resume -
Writing a resume can be a “reality test” and can
help a student identify weak areas that require
improvement. Suggest to him/her to get sample
resumes from the Internet or the Career Center
Library. Feel free to review drafts for grammar,
spelling, and content, but recommend that the
final version be critiqued by a Career Center
professional.
3. Challenge your student to become
“Occupationally Literate” – Ask: “Do you have
any ideas about what you might want to do when
you graduate?” If he/she seems unsure, you can
talk about what you see are his/her values,
interests, personality traits and skills. You
can also recommend: 1) Taking a self-assessment
inventory such as the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator or the Campbell Interest and Skill
Survey, 2) Talking to faculty members, and 3)
Researching a variety of interesting career
fields and employers. A career decision should
be a process and not a one-time, last-minute
event. Discourage putting this decision off
until the senior year.
4. Allow your student to make the decision
–
Occasionally, you can ask about his/her career
plans, but too much prodding can backfire. It is
understandable to want them to pick a major that
is “practical.” However, it should be balanced
with his/her own interests and passions. Only
sometimes does picking a major means picking the
career for life. It’s common for students to
change majors after further study, internships,
and career counseling, so don’t freak out when
they come up with an outrageous or impractical
idea. Chances are plans will evolve. Feel free
to make suggestions about majors and career
fields, but let him/her be the ultimate judge of
what’s best. Career development can be
stressful. Perhaps this is the first really big
decision that your son or daughter has had to
make. Be patient, sympathetic and understanding,
even if you don’t agree with your child’s
decisions.
5. Emphasize the importance of internships – The
Career Center will not “place” your child in a
job at graduation. Colleges grant degrees, but
not job guarantees, so having relevant
experience in this competitive job market is
critical. Your son or daughter can sample career
options through summer employment, volunteer
work and most importantly internships. Why
internships? Employers want not only a college
degree. They want experience and internships are
the answer. Several internships can help develop
key communication, problem-solving, and
administrative skills. Many companies hire from
within their own internship programs. A
recommendation letter from an internship can
sometimes tip the scale of an interview. Never
forget the importance of internships!!!
6. Encourage extracurricular involvement - Part
of experiencing college life is to be involved
and active outside the classroom. Interpersonal
and leadership skills, qualities valued by
future employers, are often developed through
extracurricular activities.
7. Persuade your student to stay up-to-date with
current events – Employers will expect students
to know what is happening around them. Make sure
they are reading about current events. When they
are home on break, discuss national and world
issues with them.
8. Expose your student to the world of work –
Most students have a stereotypical view of the
workplace. Take your child to your workplace and
explain what you do for a living. Show him/her
how to network. Help him/her to identify
potential employers.
9. Teach the value of networking- Introduce
him/her to people who have the careers/jobs that
interest them the most. Have him/her contact
people in your networks for information on
summer jobs. Encourage your child to “shadow”
someone in the workplace to increase awareness
of interesting career fields.
10. Help the career center - Call the Career
Center when you have a summer, part-time or
full-time job opening. The staff will help you
find a good fit. If your company hires interns,
have the internships listed in the Career
Center. Join the Career Center advisory network
and use your “real world” experience to help
students. Offer to participate in a career panel
or workshop.
Tom’s Tip: “My father didn’t tell me how to
live, he lived, and let me watch him do it.” –
Clarence Budinton Kelland
Keep Climbing!
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