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Interfering parents who get involved in their adult children’s lives came under media scrutiny this year.

So called ‘helicopter parents’ who hover over their offspring and particularly influence their career decisions, were criticised as doing more harm than good by Dr Paul Redmond of Liverpool University. He described the mobile phone as “the longest umbilical cord”.

To find out what graduating students felt about parental involvement in their job search, the online recruitment website GRB conducted a survey of its database.

Here’s what they found:

• Gen Y graduates welcome parental interest and support for their careers but are less happy when the interest spills over into interference;

• 18% of parents show little or no interest in careers while 43% show a lot of interest;

• When it came to parents getting actively involved in their careers, 26% welcomed the involvement and 36% tolerated it but one in four wished that their parents would not get involved;

• Faced with a number of scenarios based on actual cases of parents getting involved, the consensus was almost entirely hostile to parents being ‘hands-on’. For example, 58% would be unhappy with parents accompanying them to careers fairs, 87% would object to parents negotiating salaries with employers, and 97% would resist parents attending job interviews. 96% would not want their parents to question an employer as to why their child might have been overlooked for promotion.

To find out more about the survey, contact Dan Hawes on 01273-200411 or d.hawes@grb.uk.com.