By Jane Han
Staff Reporter
Some write their kids' resumes, while others show up at job fairs and even call hiring managers to land interviews. With the job market continuing to shrink, ``helicopter parents'' have started descending into the hiring process to rescue their grown-up, jobless children.
Among the first to notice the chopper moms and dads were recruiters like Ki Eun-joo, a headhunter who has recently been getting more inquiries from parents.
``From the application procedure to the salary negotiation, they want to know anything and everything,'' says Ki, who mainly recruits for medium-sized domestic firms. ``Some insist that they come and meet me in person.''
A poll released Thursday shows that almost 38 percent of 20-something job seekers team up with their parents through the job seeking procedure. More than 40 percent of the 532 respondents say that get parental approval before applying, while 14 percent said moms and dads fill out the lengthy job applications for them.
Human resource professionals say that helicopter parents ― the ones who hover over every aspect of their children's lives ― are so common these days they've learned how to deal with them.
Yoon, a hiring officer at one major conglomerate, admits that he was first taken aback by overly intrusive moms and dads, but now tries to handle them in a consistent manner.
``I pretty much repeat the same line over and over again,'' said Yoon, who tells eager parents that no information can be given out to individuals other than the job applicant.
But many times, the simple response doesn't work with pushy guardians, who turn emotional when their adult-aged kids get rejected from a job.
Even if they manage to get hired, the salary better be good or else another angry phone call ensues.
Some recruiters said that parents haven't shown any embarrassment in contacting them to re-negotiate their son or daughter's starting salary.
Moon Ji-young of Career, an online recruiter that carried out the poll, says the tightening job market makes parents more nervous than job seekers, but warned that excessive involvement would do more harm than good.
``Some things are just not acceptable,'' she said, adding that ``having mommy and daddy write the job application and bringing them to interviews isn't going to impress any employer.''