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?

@DogInATent she didn’t, last update said she was awaiting a senior HR staff member.

She's been caught out and so withdrawing her fraudulent application. What damage she could have caused since she is happy to lie so readily will now be avoided.

I imagine most embellish their CV's but to make it up entirely is dreadful.

Yep. Any questions at all from HR, however anodyne, might well have made her realise the game is up. I imagine that HR would keep any contact to themselves though.

@PenelopeLively - this was the last update from the OP . Just in case you missed it.

Very unlikely given her age and apparent lack of children, that demographic is really not going to be registering and reading threads and happening upon one about themsleves

Haven’t put mine on my CV since mid 90’s first proper job.

There is no benefit for putting your date of birth on a CV. Some people put very personal details on it them (don’t want to know your kids names either). It’s irrelevant.

@LookItsMeAgain oh yes, thanks, site is glitching a bit.

Only employment if it is in conjunction with training. Full time employment isn't legal.

Glad it’s sorted but I sort of admire this girl’s ballsiness (or female equivalent). I mean, she did interview really well, she didn’t appear to be a teenager. If she can do things legitimately, without faking references, and doesn’t turn to a life of crime, she’ll probably go far! 🤷🏼‍♀️

Yes, that occuurred to me as well. I agree with @Crazylazydayz that HR must have contacted her to clarify a few details, and she realised that the game was up.

This has been a really interesting thread.

Oh, and neither DH nor I have a Linkedin profile.

@DogInATent

her references don't check out though. The OP discovered an email address for one had been falsified.

In the NHS we had a admin worker/sole secretary if our service, that we weren't at all sure had the experience she claimed.

She was continually on performance management.

Lied continually about important letter typed (they weren't) sent (same).

She told patients clinicians had left the service (they hadn't).

She hid/mislaid?
stuff continually... Incoming paper mail, important phone messages... She'd say she'd definitely passed on messages to this /that clinician about forensic clients.... Really important stuff... But she rarely did this.

We couldn't work out if it was incompetence /memory issues or sabotage...

Can't tell you how stressful it was.

In the end busy clinicians had to mop up loads of secretarial stuff as she was so awful.
.

She also caused LOADS of interpersonal shit... People believing her when she had spoken to clinician x about Y. And the message leaver believing the clinicians just hadn't bothered to reply about urgent stuff.

In the end she left...she should have been sacked. But she took up masses of senior clinicians and admin time - managing her/sorting out her mess.

It would have been a lot better had she been sifted out at interview stage, and definitely at probation stage.

She cost the NHS 10s of thousands of pounds, both in terms of her salary /on costs but the hours it took in managing her/sorting out messes.

It was all hugely stressful.

I never employ anyone unless I'm very very sure of them because of this.

I think this is the best option but I have a strong feeling they're going to say not hiring her because of her date of birth not matching CV timeline might be seen as age discrimination... a protected characteristic

No they wouldn’t.

I did work at Woolworths. And I did work on the pick n mix too Saturday sales assistant becomes "customer experience executive".

Isn't Woolworths still around in some other countries?

Your HR people are idiots. Inquiring into the fact that her age doesn't tie up with her claimed experience cannot make you guilty of age discrimination. Plus there are the dodgy email addresses which has nothing whatsoever to do with age.

IME HR people tend to be pretty useless on equality law anyway. I once worked somewhere where we had concerns that a colleague on maternity leave wasn't being offered promotion at the same time as a male colleague of equal seniority and ability. The HR person got extremely shirty when we expressed concerns that this was an equality issue and was very huffy at the very suggestion. The trouble was, some of those raising concerns were employment lawyers - but she still wouldn't concede that they might know more about it than she did.

What if she lies on the job as well? What if she says she's sent that contract regarding that million pound deal and she hasn't? One person can cause A LOT of problems. Then you have the issue of getting rid of her

I love the casual ageism here. Why is she any more likely to be a useless liar than anyone else, because she's 19? Anyway, the issue has been resolved, due to the OP's eagle eye. She may have dodged a bullet, she may have lost out on a good employee. We'll never know.

There could be other reasons for using a fake identity, for example maybe she has been in prison?

It's not a standard requirement. If you do include it, it may lead to discrimination on age. That's happened to me in the past (and when I have interviewed, other people on the panel tried to exclude potential candidates on the grounds of their age), and unless the person is 16 or 75, it's not really relevant.

@IamtheDevilsAvocado this is what happened on my role, except being the same level and role I had to mop up her mistakes, I was told I caused problems and constantly reported and she harassed me. Truly one of the worst experiences in my life! All because the line manager wanted her and brushed her lack of relevant references under the rug!!

Ah shame. Was I the only one who was hoping she was genuine?

Tbf, how often do you read about successful people who openly admit to blagging their way into showbusiness etc. Sometimes confidence is all.

Whereas age is really important where I work as it affects whether you are allowed to drive company vehicles and whether you are allowed on certain work sites.

Yeah and how often is the ‘blagging’ the tip of a deceitful iceberg. Stop glamourising it.

She's morel likely to be a liar because she's lied already, and gone to the lengths of forging an email address.. Admittedly not she hasn't lied uselessly, but it's reasonable for an employer not to want a liar of any calibre.

My CV would give away my age because I took O levels

OP has already said that these were huge companies. I agree, totally plausible if she was working for a small family business. Technically I was doing reception duties aged 8 as dad worked from home and we had to answer the door and sign for courier deliveries. The courier guy was a sweetheart and would patiently hold his clipboard as low as possible for me or my younger brother to print our names.

If Dad was CEO of a a large, well-known company this would not have been possible. Sure kids would have advantages but not full time job at age 13 type advantage.