Nepotism is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in conversations about success. The truth is that most people, if they are being honest, would use whatever connections they have to help the people they love. The line between a helpful introduction and damaging nepotism is thinner than most people are comfortable admitting, and it gets even more complicated when the person you are vouching for does not deliver.
One finance executive spent twenty years building a reputation worth staking on the people he believed in. He staked it on both his children equally, even though one of them was a stepchild. One of them flourished; the other one couldn’t hack it. But is it still nepotism if you are just plain good at your job? The failing sibling would soon find out.
Nepotism is a funny one, and most people would admit they don’t see too much wrong with it if they can benefit from it
Wavebreak Media / Magnific (not the actual photo)
A father pulled some strings to land both his kids internships, but when one couldn’t quite make the cut, she started pointing fingers
syda_productions / Magnific (not the actual photo)
The dad was left torn because he wanted to help his daughter, but she had already proven that the job simply isn’t where her expertise lies
Statistics show a majority of people wouldn’t mind a bit of nepotism if they were offered the opportunity to benefit from it
Nepotism gets a bad reputation, and most of the time it deserves it (erm, the Smith siblings, anyone?). But there is data about how people actually behave when connections are available that tells a more complicated story. Nearly 70% of workers believe nepotism is widespread in their workplace, and they are probably right.
And yet, when asked whether they would personally accept a dream job offered through a personal connection without an interview, 91.3% said yes. Immediately. Without hesitation. So it seems it is a little more difficult to condemn something if you can benefit from it.
The public verdict on using connections to help family is similarly nuanced. A YouGov study found that 42% of people think it is perfectly reasonable to use personal contacts to help a family member get a job, even if that person would not have had the opportunity otherwise. Only 17% think it is actually bad. As for the rest, it is probably too complicated to form an opinion.
But modern America is a bit of a dog-eat-dog world, and more than two-thirds of Americans believe personal connections are important to getting ahead professionally, with over a third calling them very important. In other words, networking is just nepotism that went to college and learned better vocabulary.
magnific / Magnific (not the actual photo)
If this daughter understood statistics better, she might have landed a job after all. It has been documented that employers extend full-time job offers to roughly 62% of their intern class, meaning that even in the best-case scenario, almost four in ten interns do not get offered a permanent role.
Between 50% and 56% of all interns ultimately convert their placement into full-time employment. Hamza landing a paid position is a fabulous outcome, but it is not a guaranteed one, and Hailey not receiving an offer is disappointing but statistically unremarkable. The father did the same thing for both of them. The market did the rest.
What he cannot do, and what Hailey seems to be struggling to accept, is control what happens after the introduction is made. A referral is not a guarantee. It is a door opened by someone with enough credibility to unlock it, and what happens on the other side depends entirely on the person walking through it.
He has already spent that credibility once on her behalf, and in professional finance, reputation is not a renewable resource you can draw on indefinitely. The people he works with trust his judgment because he has earned it over 20 years of demonstrated reliability. Asking him to stake that again on someone who has already not delivered is a dangerous game.
It is asking him to potentially compromise the foundation of everything he has built, and that is a request that sits well outside the boundaries of what any parent, step or otherwise, should be expected to say yes to.
Do you think this dad should give her another chance or is the ball in her court now? Share some advice in the comments!
Commenters unanimously said this dad was not at fault, and she needs to attend a few classes at the school of hard knocks
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