WASHINGTON — A workplace is a not a classroom, and young employees-to-be probably need some parental guidance as they embark on that interview or first day of work.
Helping a kid get and keep that job or internship can require being patient and sharing some hard lessons, said ModernMom.com parenting blogger Leslie Morgan Steiner.
For instance: Don’t be shocked when your kid doesn’t realize that flip-flops won’t cut it with the boss. Morgan Steiner recounted her own 19-year-old daughter’s collision with reality on the first day of her summer job.
“She looked at me like as if I had three heads when I told her that she could not wear jeans and flip-flops the first day,” Morgan Steiner told WTOP’s Mark Lewis and Debra Feinstein. “She clearly felt sort of almost violated by the fact that she had to dress a certain way for her job, and it took 45 minutes of looking through my closet.”
Getting kids ready for the adult world is a timeless coming-of-age situation, she said, but it’s more complicated now.
“Our culture has become so incredibly casual in the way that we dress and present ourselves,” Morgan Steiner said.
Therefore, it’s necessary to dust off some classic (but very true) axioms that our own parents probably shared with us when we weren’t paying attention:
- Clothes make the person.
- Dress for the job you want, not the job/internship you have.
- You never get a second chance at making a first impression.
“Kids are used to this,” said Morgan Steiner. They understand social media’s power in amplifying appearance, she said, “they’re just used to sending a very different message.”
For that first day on the job, she suggested, kids should check with their employer-to-be in advance to see what the policies are about appearance (e.g., piercings, tattoos, skirt length, footwear etc.).
“Your kids should make that call. Not you,” Morgan Steiner said.
Stressing the importance of looking sharp raises a very important question, though: Doesn’t that message of “you need to look professional” run contrary to what they’re told about celebrating their identity, individuality and the like?
It does, she said, and they’ll need to get used to it.
“They have to understand that this is just a reality of life,” said Morgan Steiner, who added that kids also have to understand the importance of such related things as punctuality and politeness.
“This is all stuff that we can pass on to our kids,” she said.
