Karim Ullah knew his eldest daughter, 28-year-old Shakila, was gifted from an early age. At the age of eight, she began playing the piano, followed by the violin, recorder and ukulele. But it wasn’t until she started singing in secondary school that he knew she would be a musician. “It’s a divine gift to be able to do what she does,” he says.
Although Shakila has gone on to write and produce her own music and graduated from the ICMP, one of the top music schools in the UK, Karim says she has been “disappointed that things haven’t quite happened yet”. This certainly isn’t down to a lack of effort on her dad’s part.
Over the years, as a result of countless emails, cold calling, LinkedIn networking and job applications sent off by Karim, the 53-year-old has booked his daughter several jobs, including performances at festivals in east London, Essex and Cambridgeshire, often with thousands of punters in the audience. “Sometimes I’ve called and said, ‘Look, I have a very talented daughter,’ and as a result, [people] have booked her,” he says.
He handles all of his daughter’s publicity, has written press releases, created listings for her in music directories. One application he made led to her taking the stage at Club Wembley. Another time, Karim found Stevie Wonder’s UK manager, and organised a meeting to show him Shakila’s music. He says he has “lost count” of how many people he has contacted.
Despite not having any music industry connections – Karim has worked as a chef, taxi driver, restaurant owner and now runs a luxury golf publication – he is just one of the rising number of parents going to extreme lengths to help their adult children navigate the world of work.
In many ways, it is nothing new. From the Bank of Mum and Dad, to passing down professional networks, or nepotism in many industries, parents have always opened doors for their children. But what feels starkly different now is not that parents help out, but just how much help seems to be necessary.
An increasingly competitive job market, decline of entry-level jobs and the disruption of AI have all contributed to a perfect storm. Official figures have revealed that more than one million young people, around one in eight, are not in education, employment or training (NEET) – the highest level in more than 12 years.
Surveys have shown that 70 per cent of Gen Z jobseekers have asked their parents for help in the job search process, 16 per cent say that their parents submitted job applications for them, and one in four have even gone so far as to bring a parent to their job interview. Other research has found parents helping with CVs and portfolios, contacting employers directly and even becoming involved in salary or holiday negotiations.
It’s something that Victoria McLean, founder and CEO of City CV, an international career consultancy that works with graduates and young professionals, has noticed increasingly. “Without a doubt parents are more involved in the process than they were five or 10 years ago,” she says. “Quite often at City CV, the first person who contacts us is the parent. What used to be a bit of encouragement from the sidelines has, in a lot of cases, tipped into something closer to helicopter parenting, where the parent is running the job search rather than watching it.”
Is this a result of a different style of modern parenting or just a consequence of an increasingly tough entry-level job market? McLean says it always comes from a good place: a parent who has seen a job go up and doesn’t want their son or daughter to miss the deadline or a child that is busy or lazy or lacks the drive, but it often means that the first time some of these graduates hear about a role is when they’re invited to interview for a job they never applied for themselves.
‘Without a doubt, parents are more involved in the job application process than they were five or 10 years ago,’ says Victoria McLean, founder and CEO of City CV“It’s gone beyond phone calls and pep talks,” says McLean. “We’re seeing more parents who write the CV, draft the covering email and submit applications under their child’s name, sometimes before the young person has even seen the job advert.”
She says she understands the instinct. “You can see your child struggling and want to take the weight off them,” she says. “I have a lot of sympathy for parents because the job market their children are entering isn’t easy. There are online applications, automated screening, video interviews, assessments and often several rounds before somebody gets anywhere near an offer. Young people can apply for dozens of jobs and hear very little back. If you’re watching your child go through that week after week, of course you’re going to worry.”
It’s this rejection that mother-of-two Lucy* worries about for her 16-year-old son Owen*, who aspires to work in mechanical engineering but has struggled with high levels of social anxiety linked to his autism his entire life. Research in the UK has found that the steep rise of mental health issues, anxiety following the Covid-19 pandemic and neurodiversity are some of the primary drivers for many young people being out of work.
“Now he’s 16, a lot of family are making comments about him getting his first job or earning his own money, but he’s just not really there yet,” she says. “There are a lot of challenges that come from having social anxiety that make the process of applying for a job difficult: from having the confidence to write what you’re good at on a CV or doing work experience.”
Lucy has applied for work experience for Owen, which he will be starting next week and she hopes this will help boost his confidence. “My son really does want to work. But there are so few jobs nowadays – smaller jobs like using a sticker gun in a chemist don’t really exist and there are so many more people applying,” she says. “Being knocked back and having to deal with the effects of being rejected can impact mental health, anxiety and low mood.”
Ultimately, Lucy is clear that she doesn’t want to apply for jobs for her son and instead, would like him to “develop the skillset to be able to be independent and function independently of me”.
However, she has noticed parents around her doing the same, “whether that’s because there aren’t enough jobs available or because they don’t have the confidence and the skillset to be able to do that”. She says schools need to do a lot better at training kids to apply for jobs.
‘We’re seeing more parents who write the CV, draft the covering email and submit applications under their child’s name, sometimes before the young person has even seen the job advert,’ says McLeanKarim echoes this sentiment. His family moved to Bishop’s Stortford, an affluent part of Hertfordshire, in 2009. “In the last year and a half, I’ve never seen so many parents posting on Facebook groups, ‘My son is 16, my daughter is 18, they need work experience – does anyone know of anyone?’ I think parents have really woken up to the fact that things have changed. It’s very sad and disheartening to see so many young people in that position,” he says.
Throughout her twenties, Shakila has applied for hundreds of jobs in industries such as marketing, PR and social media. “She’s so artistically talented, but in some ways, she’s a little bit reluctant to do the hustle like I did – she admits she’s not a business person” Karim says. “It is very hard for young people. I feel so desperately sorry for them. When I used to look for work, because I was good on the phone, I would just call people and say, ‘These are my qualities, this is what I can bring to your company, and if you need me, I can come.’ It meant that almost everyone I talked to, I’d at least get an interview.”
Although she appreciates her dad’s persistence, Shakila says there have been times she finds it “extremely annoying”.
“He isn’t a musician or creative and doesn’t understand not every gig or performance is worth doing as some may underpay for for example,” she says. “I had to say in my twenties to stop signing me up for these things unless pay is involved as I was an experienced performer.”
However, Karim says he will stop at nothing to help his daughter. “I try my best,” he says. “I live with this very simple formula: if there’s an opportunity to help someone and you know you can do it, you don’t think about it. Why would you say no?”
McLean has some advice to parents – she urges them to support from the sidelines. “Help them research. Read their CV. Practice an interview with them. Introduce them to somebody useful. Encourage them when the inevitable rejection arrives,” she says. “I understand completely why you’d want to step in and shoulder some of it, but the flip side is worth thinking about too: if your child walks into a role having never done the applying, the interviewing or the negotiating, they can end up genuinely out of their depth once they’re in the job and you’re not there to help.
“By all means help them find professional support if they need it, whether that’s a structured graduate programme like our City CV graduate programme or simply someone outside the family to look over their CV. Then let them send the email, make the call and have the conversation.”
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