Apparently a number of firms report that entry-level candidates are now bringing their parents to job interviews and letting mom negotiate their benefits for them.
This sounded hilarious, so of course I had to check out the links. Firstly, Klick gets the links backwards. The article at the first link says that "parents of new hires are calling employers to negotiate salary and benefits." That's kind of creepy. But in the article at the second link, the "bringing their parents to job interviews" seems much more normal, once you read what actually happened.
"Last year I had a parent sit in the lobby and wait the entire four hours during the job interview," says Audrey Abron, an executive recruiter for Belk Department Stores in Charlotte, N.C. "The girl introduced us to her mother, and there was no embarrassment. She felt it was acceptable behavior. What do you say? Some things should be understood." Things like, you don't bring your mommy or daddy to a job interview.
To me, though, this just sounds like the kid got a ride with their mom, and her mom waited in the lobby. It's a bit weird that she would wait in the lobby, rather than go to a coffee shop to wait, but it's not like the parent was in the interview room with their kid.
But what really piqued my interest was that the second article included the line "as the labor market tightens". Tightening labour market? That doesn't sound right. It turns out that Klick, to back up his contention that "entry-level candidates are now bringing their parents to job interviews and letting mom negotiate their benefits for them" [emphasis mine], has relied on articles from 2006 and 2007. In his last paragraph, Klick says:
But, as Thaler suggests, if this turn has proved to be a bad one, we can simply reverse course to fix things in 20 years or so.
The fact that he's relying on stories that are about 3 years old to bolster his case suggests to me that it may take less than 20 years to "fix things".
Approximately 17 years.
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