Basic Trope: A character (usually an incompetent one) is granted a high position of power due to their personal connections with the organization's top dogs.
- Straight: Trope Co. CEO Alice hires her nephew Andy and gives him the position of department head, even though Andy is only a high school graduate with no working experience and middling-to-bad grades.
- Exaggerated: The entire board of directors of Trope Co. is composed of the main shareholder's friends, relatives, and even pets.
- Downplayed: Alice hires Andy even though the company's policy requires their employees to have at least an undergraduate degree. However, she gives him an entry level position, and tells him to work his way up through his own merits (although she does provide him with some assistance that she probably wouldn't give to other workers of his level, and is more willing to overlook his mistakes that she wouldn't tolerate from others).
- Justified:
- Alice comes from a culture that values familial piety, and she feels obligated to help out her nephew even though it might harm her company.
- Trope Co. has a very competitive and cutthroat environment. Alice feels safer having a trusted family member around to keep an eye on the departments, even if he's not particularly qualified for the job description.
- Alice has known Andy for years, so she knows that he can handle the job despite his lack of proper experience/qualifications. Of course, she can't make that same assumption with applicants she doesn't personally know.
- Alice's familial connection to Andy allowed her to groom him for a job in her company.
- Inverted: Alice is strictly opposed to hiring her relatives even though Bob, the chair of the board, really, really likes Andy and wants her to hire him.
- Subverted: People assume that Andy got his job and position due to his familial connections with Alice. But Alice didn't even know that Andy is applying for a position in her company until after he was hired, and he really got in due to his merits.
- Double Subverted: The hiring manager is Andy's godfather, though. And that relationship plays a huge factor in his decision to hire Andy.
- Parodied: Trope Co.'s job application portal actually provides a separate application form for "Alice's Friends and Relatives". Instead of the usual CVs, the applicants are asked to prove their connection to Alice, and once verified, they are immediately hired without having to go through further competence tests, psych evals and interviews. Those who "fail" the test are asked to appeal directly to Alice. If they're really close friends/relatives, they should have her personal contact details, right?
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice hires two of her nephews, Andy and Bailey, but refuses to do the same for their brother Carl due to the latter's history of dishonesty. Later, both Andy and Bailey screwed up at their jobs, and Alice fires Andy, but not Bailey, even though Bailey's mistake is arguably worse. When asked about it, Alice affirms that her decision is not based out of a preferential treatment towards Bailey, but because Bailey has consistently done a better job than Andy—a known slacker—even if Bailey screwed up worse in this particular instance. Later, Alice replaces replaces Andy with a more experienced and qualified manager, but it is revealed that the new manager is Alice's old classmate.
- Andy applies for a position at Alice's company, and everyone expects Alice to help him get hired. To the surprise of everyone he is able to earn the job on legitimate merits. Once Andy is safely into the company, Alice then pulls some strings to reassign, promote, or even terminate certain individuals to ensure Andy an upward career path. It is then when people grow suspicious of Alice and Andy's connections, but at this point Andy can transfer to a cushy position at an unrelated company.
- Averted: No one is hired due to their personal connections.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: Alice: "Remember, Andy, I got you this job, so don't make me look bad."
- Invoked: Alice actually implements an official company policy that her relatives are allowed to bypass the normal hiring process and apply directly to her.
- Exploited: All of Alice's other friends and relatives who are down on their luck come to her asking for a job at Trope Co., hoping to get a comfy high-paying position without having to do much work.
- Defied:
- When Andy asks Alice if he can work at her company, she tells him to go through the proper hiring channels, refusing to give him an extra advantage, their familial ties notwithstanding.
- Alice offers to help Andy, but he refuses. He wants to succeed on his own merits and be known in his own right, not be known as "Alice's nephew."
- Alice proposes to put Andy in a high-ranking position despite his credentials, work history, and personality not seeming to fit the profile, but the board shuts her down and refuses to hear another word even suggesting it.
- Discussed: "If Andy weren't the CEO's nephew, I'd have fired him a long time ago. This damned nepotism is ruining this company!"
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Since Trope Co. is run by people who are frankly unsuitable for the job, it goes bankrupt within a few months.
- Reconstructed: Alice reminds the relatives that she hired that, while she is willing to give them the chance to work for her company, she expects them to earn their place if they want to keep their job.
Back to Nepotism.
