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(Avoiding the pull to reference US politics here.) What would the implications be if a similar event occurred at, say, Google? Would it even be possible? It s

(Avoiding the pull to reference US politics here.) What would the implications be if a similar event occurred at, say, Google? Would it even be possible? It seems that the onus for verification and in-depth analysis of a candidate falls onto the business. Is this just a case of poor decision making from the leadership group who hired the candidate? Is it uncommon to call more than one reference, or to simply Google a candidate and see what shows up? For such a high-level, government role... I'm sure there's more than just Google to reference as well?

LinuxBender 7y ago
I am not a lawyer, but it probably is not the same. Lieing to get a government job may have criminal implications depending on the job role and requirements, security clearance requirements, authority of the position, etc.., whereas lieing for a civilian job that is not involved in legal enforcement, government secrets, etc.. is likely a civil issue and the fallout would probably depend on the level of the position and the investment by the company involved. I'm sure there would be edge cases where I am incorrect. Probably in certain banking roles, or positions that bridge government and civilian orgs. Just guessing, really.
- schnevets 7y ago
  I would assume a CIO position would require some Australian equivalent of Top Secret Clearance. That would go beyond simple civil fraud into a criminal offense. However, CNN left those implications off the story because it is more entertaining to imagine she is in jail for using Kate Upton as her LinkedIn profile pic...
  - LinuxBender 7y ago
    Especially likely true in a publicly traded company.
EpicEng 7y ago
>(Avoiding the pull to reference US politics here.) Should be easy considering this happened in Australia...
- ngngngng 7y ago
  There are political systems outside of the United States? Color me surprised.
- tannerc 7y ago
  Similar to the linked story here: the US currently has a President with no political experience, who has also hired family members for prominent roles in the government.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    Yes... not sure how I missed that one
  - TMWNN 7y ago
    >Similar to the linked story here Not at all. >the US currently has a President with no political experience Which is a) known to all and b) considered by supporters to be a virtue, as is often the case for those in public life in many countries. >who has also hired family members for prominent roles in the government. Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are Senior Advisors to the President, which are by definition positions whose main/only qualifications are "the President trusts them". Like her father, these two aren't paid a salary.[1] Every US president since Washington, and every human leader since Ugg became chief caveman of the Grugg tribe, has had advisors that he trusts as much as (and, usually, more than) those with official titles below him. A common term for such for presidents is the Kitchen Cabinet.[2] Sometimes the Kitchen Cabinet gets titles to formalize their access to the advisee. In the US that's Senior Advisor to the President; in the UK it's Special Adviser to the Prime Minister;[3] in many countries it's Minister without Portfolio. [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/30/trump-white-house-salaries-240149 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/30/trump-white-house-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Cabinet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Cabinet [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_adviser_(UK) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_adviser_(UK) [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_without_Portfolio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_without_Portfolio
oh_sigh 7y ago
I was hired at one of the FAANG companies, and it turns out there was an issue with my college diploma where my college wouldn't release the records. My HR person hounded me for like 2 months until I got it sorted out(most of the time spent waiting on hearing back from my college administrators). I'd imagine I would have been fired if it appeared I couldn't prove I graduated the college I claimed - even though I've been in the work force for 15 years and assumed my college experience was largely irrelevant to getting hired.
- nighthawk648 7y ago
  If you didn’t include your school on resume would this have occurred? After 15 years really? That is annoying...
  - oh_sigh 7y ago
    It was annoying because it felt like my employment could be terminated rightfully at any time due to no fault of my own - but I'm happy that the company forced me to deal with it. What happened was, while I had more than enough credits to graduate, I had an "incomplete" for a course in my last semester. I had dropped the course before the semester begam with the approval of my professor, but he marked me as incomplete instead of dropped, and apparently you can't get a diploma with an incomplete on your record(despite them letting me walk in graduation, and sending me a diploma a few weeks later). Thankfully I had the whole email chain(because I bulk forwarded all of my college emails to my personal gmail address) at the time between my professor, the college administrator, and myself. If I didn't have that, theoretically I would have had to go back to college for a single class to finish out my degree.
    - nighthawk648 7y ago
      If you did not include graduation on your application would this not have been a problem? Do you think the company would have let you continue to work while completing the course? Especially if it was like a foreign language or something?
- 7y ago
munk-a 7y ago
I think in a private company you'd need to prove not only that the hiring was a waste of funds since the person was ineffective but also that they premeditated and succeeded at damaging the company during their tenure to get a general ruling that'd result in jailtime or a government enforced fine - the other recourse a company might have is if they committed fraud when they signed their employment contract. I think it'd be extremely dangerous for private corporations to run to the government for enforcement in the case that this sort of fraud occurs and that it'd be well if judges were highly skeptical of employers - otherwise, given the power imbalance of employers, they may be able to abuse such a system to subsidize their labour costs. Private employers should also be given no opportunity to reclaim any costs arising from such a situation[1], as that too could be too easily abused. 1. And currently they are not, if you've ever wondered why nearly every employer prorates vacation time even for senior employees it's because if, on Jan 1, you took all your vacation days and then quit - there is no legal way for the company to try and reclaim the wages you were erroneously paid out - though if there was any pending funds coming to you (a bonus for instance) the company can usually deduct costs from those funds or just wholly withhold them, depending on the way that payment was described.
- User23 7y ago
  > I think in a private company you'd need to prove not only that the hiring was a waste of funds since the person was ineffective but also that they premeditated and succeeded at damaging the company during their tenure to get a general ruling that'd result in jailtime or a government enforced fine - the other recourse a company might have is if they committed fraud when they signed their employment contract. That's an "advantage" I'd never thought of to the standard US company boilerplate that you don't have an employment contract and (almost) nobody at the company has the authority to change that.
bluGill 7y ago
Most places care about results. If you get in and do the work correctly I don't care so much about your background. However for things like medical doctors, we need more care. Most people reading this could successfully be a medical doctor for a time: most people know enough to fake it and most problems are either obvious (or the right tests are obvious and from the results...) or go away on their own. You might not give the best treatment, but you can come up with something that is "good enough". However eventually (a few days) you will come across something the the average person doesn't know but a real doctor would.
gwbas1c 7y ago
I work for a Bay Area company. We fired a hire shortly after finding out that there were issues on the resume. As I didn't work closely with this person, I don't remember the details. What's clear is that HR will usually check up on employees after their start date, because it's assumed that no one's lying. In another case, a company that I interviewed with ghosted me. (When I met the founder, he was late, had a bad attitude, ect.) They ghosted another friend of mine, and ended up hiring a rather unsavory person. When we were in school, their new hire was the campus drug dealer and cheated off of a friend of mine. They fired him a few months later when they found out he had a criminal record for cocaine. So, yes, it's common for (Edit: American) HR to continue investigating new hires and then fire them shortly after due to issues with credentials or criminal records.

LinuxBender 7y ago

I am not a lawyer, but it probably is not the same. Lieing to get a government job may have criminal implications depending on the job role and requirements, security clearance requirements, authority of the position, etc.., whereas lieing for a civilian job that is not involved in legal enforcement, government secrets, etc.. is likely a civil issue and the fallout would probably depend on the level of the position and the investment by the company involved. I'm sure there would be edge cases where I am incorrect. Probably in certain banking roles, or positions that bridge government and civilian orgs. Just guessing, really.

schnevets 7y ago
I would assume a CIO position would require some Australian equivalent of Top Secret Clearance. That would go beyond simple civil fraud into a criminal offense. However, CNN left those implications off the story because it is more entertaining to imagine she is in jail for using Kate Upton as her LinkedIn profile pic...
- LinuxBender 7y ago
  Especially likely true in a publicly traded company.

EpicEng 7y ago

>(Avoiding the pull to reference US politics here.) Should be easy considering this happened in Australia...

ngngngng 7y ago
There are political systems outside of the United States? Color me surprised.
tannerc 7y ago
Similar to the linked story here: the US currently has a President with no political experience, who has also hired family members for prominent roles in the government.
- EpicEng 7y ago
  Yes... not sure how I missed that one
- TMWNN 7y ago
  >Similar to the linked story here Not at all. >the US currently has a President with no political experience Which is a) known to all and b) considered by supporters to be a virtue, as is often the case for those in public life in many countries. >who has also hired family members for prominent roles in the government. Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are Senior Advisors to the President, which are by definition positions whose main/only qualifications are "the President trusts them". Like her father, these two aren't paid a salary.[1] Every US president since Washington, and every human leader since Ugg became chief caveman of the Grugg tribe, has had advisors that he trusts as much as (and, usually, more than) those with official titles below him. A common term for such for presidents is the Kitchen Cabinet.[2] Sometimes the Kitchen Cabinet gets titles to formalize their access to the advisee. In the US that's Senior Advisor to the President; in the UK it's Special Adviser to the Prime Minister;[3] in many countries it's Minister without Portfolio. [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/30/trump-white-house-salaries-240149 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/30/trump-white-house-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Cabinet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Cabinet [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_adviser_(UK) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_adviser_(UK) [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_without_Portfolio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_without_Portfolio

oh_sigh 7y ago

I was hired at one of the FAANG companies, and it turns out there was an issue with my college diploma where my college wouldn't release the records. My HR person hounded me for like 2 months until I got it sorted out(most of the time spent waiting on hearing back from my college administrators). I'd imagine I would have been fired if it appeared I couldn't prove I graduated the college I claimed - even though I've been in the work force for 15 years and assumed my college experience was largely irrelevant to getting hired.

nighthawk648 7y ago
If you didn’t include your school on resume would this have occurred? After 15 years really? That is annoying...
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  It was annoying because it felt like my employment could be terminated rightfully at any time due to no fault of my own - but I'm happy that the company forced me to deal with it. What happened was, while I had more than enough credits to graduate, I had an "incomplete" for a course in my last semester. I had dropped the course before the semester begam with the approval of my professor, but he marked me as incomplete instead of dropped, and apparently you can't get a diploma with an incomplete on your record(despite them letting me walk in graduation, and sending me a diploma a few weeks later). Thankfully I had the whole email chain(because I bulk forwarded all of my college emails to my personal gmail address) at the time between my professor, the college administrator, and myself. If I didn't have that, theoretically I would have had to go back to college for a single class to finish out my degree.
  - nighthawk648 7y ago
    If you did not include graduation on your application would this not have been a problem? Do you think the company would have let you continue to work while completing the course? Especially if it was like a foreign language or something?
7y ago

munk-a 7y ago

I think in a private company you'd need to prove not only that the hiring was a waste of funds since the person was ineffective but also that they premeditated and succeeded at damaging the company during their tenure to get a general ruling that'd result in jailtime or a government enforced fine - the other recourse a company might have is if they committed fraud when they signed their employment contract. I think it'd be extremely dangerous for private corporations to run to the government for enforcement in the case that this sort of fraud occurs and that it'd be well if judges were highly skeptical of employers - otherwise, given the power imbalance of employers, they may be able to abuse such a system to subsidize their labour costs. Private employers should also be given no opportunity to reclaim any costs arising from such a situation[1], as that too could be too easily abused. 1. And currently they are not, if you've ever wondered why nearly every employer prorates vacation time even for senior employees it's because if, on Jan 1, you took all your vacation days and then quit - there is no legal way for the company to try and reclaim the wages you were erroneously paid out - though if there was any pending funds coming to you (a bonus for instance) the company can usually deduct costs from those funds or just wholly withhold them, depending on the way that payment was described.

User23 7y ago
> I think in a private company you'd need to prove not only that the hiring was a waste of funds since the person was ineffective but also that they premeditated and succeeded at damaging the company during their tenure to get a general ruling that'd result in jailtime or a government enforced fine - the other recourse a company might have is if they committed fraud when they signed their employment contract. That's an "advantage" I'd never thought of to the standard US company boilerplate that you don't have an employment contract and (almost) nobody at the company has the authority to change that.

bluGill 7y ago

Most places care about results. If you get in and do the work correctly I don't care so much about your background. However for things like medical doctors, we need more care. Most people reading this could successfully be a medical doctor for a time: most people know enough to fake it and most problems are either obvious (or the right tests are obvious and from the results...) or go away on their own. You might not give the best treatment, but you can come up with something that is "good enough". However eventually (a few days) you will come across something the the average person doesn't know but a real doctor would.

gwbas1c 7y ago

I work for a Bay Area company. We fired a hire shortly after finding out that there were issues on the resume. As I didn't work closely with this person, I don't remember the details. What's clear is that HR will usually check up on employees after their start date, because it's assumed that no one's lying. In another case, a company that I interviewed with ghosted me. (When I met the founder, he was late, had a bad attitude, ect.) They ghosted another friend of mine, and ended up hiring a rather unsavory person. When we were in school, their new hire was the campus drug dealer and cheated off of a friend of mine. They fired him a few months later when they found out he had a criminal record for cocaine. So, yes, it's common for (Edit: American) HR to continue investigating new hires and then fire them shortly after due to issues with credentials or criminal records.