The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation is Shaking Up the Workplace

4.2. REACHING OUT TO PARENTS

A small but growing number of companies are trying to woo parents, as well as their children, for a very simple and selfish reason: they hope that enlisting parents as their allies will help them attract and retain millennials. Companies realize that parents are often pulling the strings in their children's job search, pushing them to pursue certain careers. Consequently, to land a strong job candidate who is weighing two employment offers, companies sometimes try to assuage parents' fears and uncertainty. A senior executive at a financial services firm, for instance, decided to call a promising applicant's mother because she had told her daughter that the banking industry was unstable. He failed to change the mother's ...