New employee is a fake, where to go from here?

[londonnotlangdon]

It's a large organisation and I just had to send off her paperwork, passport, things like that

She was given the job after her second interview last week.

However, she has emailed me these documents (fine), and her birth certificate says born in September 2002?

That makes her 19?

This is a problem because, for example, her CV says she was an Executive Assistant to a Director in 2018? When she would've been in school?!

I've asked HR, who haven't replied properly, I've asked them to call. But someone replied to my email of concern with 'so you don't want this new me ever of staff? Why not?'

What can actually be done about this?

Some of the posters on here are unreal! You can’t legally work full time in a company until you are of leaving school age, is that age discrimination too? If she has not indicated these mythical positions are part time not full time then she has lied on her CV so that’s the first thing you can be clear about. It’s also very convenient that they were with companies that no longer exist so you can’t verify it anyway. I would simply ask her if clarify those positions- she won’t be able to square the impression that they were full time positions and she was a) too young and b) in school at the same time due to a).

Predictable. They want the risk to sit with you, not them. If you get the same advice later, email them (so written trail), saying, 'Can I just clarify that you are advising me to employ someone who appears to have lied on their CV?" They will probably change their tune and, if they don't, you will have evidence that you were acting on their advice.

You are not discriminating her on grounds of age. You are concerned that she has falsified her work history. You would, I'm sure, have the same concerns if she were 35/45/55 and had a work history that did not match her age.

😬 This is how fraudsters get away with things and how companies get in trouble.

I’ve written this so many times on this thread, people either aren’t reading all the posts or are but ignoring them.

You can’t just employ someone when there’s potential fraud and just ‘see how they go’ you’d be possibly committing a crime under the Fraud Act 2006.

How do people not realise this isn’t acceptable.

I agree with a PP. The person has clearly lied, no tax code, no Linkin profile.

She could do huge amount of damage to your company. The fact her dates dont add up are the first red flag and then continues from there. Once she is in its much more difficult for her to be asked to leave.

Imagine if this went to court and HR (although they probably wont turn up) were asked why they didnt question the questionable dates. What daft twits they will seem and the company will look vry foolish. I am not going to take this once step further and say what if the job had been in government and HR ignored all of this....

You could get HR to ask for her GCSE certificates. They could prove she was in school when she claimed to have had these fabulous jobs.

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned but there’s a website where you can see your GCSE results, it’s doesn’t go all the way back but will for her age range.

Maybe you can check that and see when she got her results, I’m not sure if you have to do it with them there or not but worth a look?
Also I think she’s blatantly just put stuff on her CV cos places have closes down isn’t that the oldest trick in the book?
Your company seem useless at trying go
work this out.

I don't see why people are advising OP to just give her a chance. If her CV is fraudulent then she has questionable integrity and cannot be trusted. Not someone you want working under you. It is making trouble for yourself in future.

It's fine that HR want to bring in your senior manager, and no doubt confer with their seniors too. But push hard here with your concerns, they're legitimate. It's not a case of you trying to stop some plucky young underdog getting ahead on her wits. The fact that she has named not one but two defunct companies shows she's been a bit obvious here since you wouldn't be able to get references from their HR. Surely if references aren't satisfactory (in terms of being verifiable re dodgy email addresses) then that's a reason to withdraw the offer? She will make up a story for this so be willing to push hard. Sounds like HR aren't being blind here, just wanting to do things by the book.

Its not for the employer to have to proof they are lying, its for the candidate to prove she is telling the truth

I would dispute that. Innocent until proven guilty. However, it's not unreasonable to ask for evidence that someone was in a job - it's not difficult to prove you worked somewhere - job offer letters, P60, P45 or a reference on headed notepaper.

I also thought that the OP was overstepping the mark by looking at the date of birth on the ID docs, but sometimes you can't help but notice things!

You don't have a PA job at 13 ffs I would dispute that too actually. When I was 13 (and younger) I used to routinely answer telephone calls for my father and take messages for him. OK I didn't type things up for him but I did admin for him. So did my mum. Neither of us were paid though! He was home-based and worked in sales and people used to call all the time.

For goodness sake stop posting on here and get HR to look into it a bit more if you are suspicious. But if it checks out, give the woman a chance. You obviously thought she was up to the job when you interviewed her. And you've got two years to get rid of her if she's rubbish.

What?

@londonnotlangdon
You need to pass this up the food chain and wait on the HR comment back. It is not for you to directly challenge the applicant (you're asking for advice about employment law on Mumsnet "ffs").

If you get back from HR an instruction you're not happy with, i.e. to proceed with recruiting her, then you need to send back up the food chain (to HR, to your line manager/dept director) a message along the lines of:

"Re. recruitment of Jane Doe. Following the response to the concerns I have raised regarding the apparent mismatch of dates and work history in relation to her age, I would like to put on record that I have requested that we make further enquiries of her references before we proceed with the onboarding process"

Just be aware, anything that you have written or will write (including emails you have already sent to HR) that mentions Jane Doe by name, or can be cross-referenced to documents/items that name her, can be subject to an SAR. You may want to discuss this in-person or over the phone with your line manager/director before committing it to writing.

Believe those of us telling you that you must do this by the book. Take the hints HR are giving you, and "ffs" get this off publicly viewable pages on Mumsnet.

Excellent advice
As you say the response was predictable, and it's really just laziness and the usual finding a reason NOT to do something - especially if it's something which may cause them the slightest inconvenience

I think the OP needs to work with HR - and get in writing with someone as senior as possible the way forward and make sure her own mangers are informed.

Either there are huge discrepancies in CV and possibility references are not real meaning there are trust and experience issues or the documentation isn't legit and thus the company can't be sure she had the right to work in UK which puts them potential problems with UK authorities.

I'd ideally want senior manger and HR to start company process for getting rid of her or if they don't that these issues are documented.

Under UK law an employee who's been with the company less than two years has very few employment rights.

Since when is a lack of a LinkedIn profile evidence of fraud?
I must tell DH. I also have a new colleague who isn't on there. She is obviously fraudulent too.

Did you not even read the very first post?

@TheSillyMastiff 😂😂

You do if you work for your dads company for example. The recruitment process should have explored all this. The failure is that of the company, you got wooed by her and are only now asking questions you should have asked at application and interview stage!

Since Mumsnet 🙄

Shed have been 13 if her dob showed as 2002 on her BC

The puzzle is that a 19-year-old would claim to have been a "junior assistant'' in a large company at the age of 13, because that is so clearly nonsense.

So, whatever HR has said to you so far, this does raise questions.

A professional HR person told you its discrimination to check inconsistencies between her CV and ID docs?
Really?

I’ve had to show a birth certificate if I didn’t have passport or driver’s license.

This reminds me of my friend who got a £60k IT manager job at age 20. He looked a lot older, left dates off his CV, and the interviewer never asked about dates or timelines. He got the job and has been there ever since doing brilliantly. His previous experience was part time whilst at school/helping at parents’ company. They never asked if it was P/T or F/T. No fraud was committed.

I’m at a loss as to what questions were asked at interview for OP’s situation to have happened.

Her CV doesn't state that she answered the phone and filed a bit of paperwork for her Dad during the school holidays though.

Her CV said she was Head of Admin and PA to the Chairman (or some other nonsense) for a large well known company.

DD was born in September 2002. She is in her 1st year at university, all her GCSEs were 1-9, rather than A-G. My niece is a few months older, so in the previous school year, I think she had 1 GCSE that was a letter rather than a number. I don't think any schools would have had all 'letter' GCSEs for children in my daughter's school year. This is something that the candidate needs to explain.

As people have said, in England for my DD's school year, full time education or a combination of employment and education was compulsory until 18. Additional questions to ask are where did the candidate complete her post 16 education, as she would have had to attend at least 20 hours training a week for 2 years post GCSEs. HR can't just run away muttering age discrimination - it's not that you think she is too young for the job, but that you think her CV is dishonest. Surely they can ask the questions here, e.g. which schools / colleges she attended with dates, plus when she did her GCSEs, asking to see certificates.