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It’s no secret that the job market for Gen Z isn’t great—and many young people rely on their parents for help, ranging from financial support to health insurance to job leads. One 2024 study found that more than half of Gen Z asked their parents to find them job opportunities, with 53% of that group reporting that their parents had found them jobs to apply to through personal connections.
Julia Lamm, PwC’s principal of workforce solutions, told me she suspects more parents will be trying to pull strings for their adult kids in this economic climate.
But how should workplaces deal with “nepo babies”? Lamm had a few suggestions to make sure the hiring process is still fair, and those without connections aren’t shut out. “The really good companies will completely blind [the connection] from the decision-making process so you don’t even know it’s a referral,” she said. “You try to hide that so that it’s inherently an unbiased process.”
If that proves impossible—as is often the case when the referred person is related to an owner, founder, or executive at a company—Lamm suggests thinking about a revamp of how entry-level employees engage with the company. One firm she works with is considering a rotational program for junior employees to get hands-on experience with different parts of the company.
“It’s to truly support the development of the nepo babies so that if they do rise to a role in the organization that’s going to be a leadership role, they will be credible,” she said. “They will have the experience, and they will be able to properly steer the organization so that the ‘nepo’ part was just opening the door, and they do the rest.”
Nepo friends should be treated in a similar fashion. In addition to blind hiring processes, Lamm recommends making sure those employees that were hired by friends in leadership roles be subject to secondary, unbiased reviewers during performance review season.
“Sometimes what happens is you … bring your friend on over, and because they were successful in another organization, you think they’re going to be successful here,” Lamm said. “That is not always the case. Those are the scenarios where I’ve seen it go south.”
Kristin Stoller
Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media
kristin.stoller@fortune.com
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