My (28/f) friend (26/f) brings her mom (50’s?) to her job interviews. This in turn has lead to her getting 0 job offers after grad school. Should I get involved?

TLDR: Just as the title says. She lives with her parents and it’s not a cultural thing (white and midwestern), I’ve always known her mom was “protective” but since she’s graduated from grad school it’s gotten to a point where it’s really impacting her life. I don’t know if it’s even my place to get involved and explain that to most people it’s really weird that her mother accompanies her into the interview.

So now for the long version. “Tina” is an absolute amazing woman, she graduated top of her class from a top program in her field. I work in an adjacent field and have some overlap in the companies that are looking to hire.

She spent her time in graduate working under two professors who are very well known and published. Though outside of her practicum and research she has no work experience. She got tons of interviews through her connections to professors and her impressive academic resume. We are also in an area that has a high demand for her degree. She should be swimming in job offers but instead she has received none, not even a second interview.

I heard from a mutual acquaintance that the relatively close knit field Tina is in the employees from different companies are all talking about the interviewee who brought their mother into the interview. It’s reflected badly enough that word got to my mutual acquaintance who told me as she knows I’m friends with Tina. I don’t know if I even should bring this up with Tina, or how to go about it if I do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Additional info:

I’ve always known Tina comes from an overprotective family, but she’s so normal I always took the quirks as well family quirks. Her older brother didn’t move out until he got a job across the country at 30 and her mother was freaked out because the whole family has never left Oklahoma. Her mother spent two months living with the brother after he moved to make sure he “settled in”.

She also has no social media, not even a LinkedIn because she “isn’t allowed”. With the explanation being that employers will look at it and ?? I’m not quite sure. She’s not the kind of person who even if she did have social media would post anything that would make an employer upset/uncomfortable. Her mother’s other argument is that people will use it to find/kidnap Tina. Like those old myspace warnings that used to run on the news of the dangers of strangers on the internet.

There’s tons of other smaller things like not being allowed to drive past 11pm, not going to nail salons because their “sex traffickers”, basically anything very headline news warnings of “YOU WONT BELIEVE WHATS SECRETLY KILLING YOU.” And Tina is such a genuinely good person she won’t break these rules because she feels to guilty to confront her mom about them.

Submitted May 31, 2019 at 12:00PM by throwawayitalltoday http://bit.ly/2ww9GZS