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 i don’t think p is talking about op.

Oh misread that. You sound very annoyed at op.

@PenelopeLively not really, it was more sarcasm than criticism. But I think the OP's made a naïve mistake here. It just needs one of her colleagues to browse Mumsnet tonight and the situation is immediately recognisable. And it's a very click-baity, high traffic article that's been Trending all day and has a very high probability of being picked up by one of the social media scrapers.

I don't even understand HR's reply on OP's first post. Can somebody please explain?

Glad it’s resolved, OP. I think her references were fake and that should be reason enough for your HR people to withdraw an offer. Shocking that they were so weak. Well done you for taking a stand. Great that she pulled out!

It's possible that this is true. DS had an incredibly entrepreneurial friend who set up a marketing business the summer after his GCSEs and somehow (must have had connections) ended up with some huge accounts of companies that wanted to market to rich youth. This friend ended up paying my DS to be his assistant - to book him flights for international meetings, set up zooms, proof read his marketing pitches etc. He paid properly too - £25ph, rising to £60ph if he called DS at 3am and said 'I need this before dawn' which he did a few times.

That friend sold his company for a healthy profit after he finished his A levels, so he could concentrate on uni. If she did the sort of job DS did, she could legitimately call herself exec assistant. DS did pull all nighters and worked hard, though only very part time.

We’ll report it then @DogInATent instead of pushing it up by commenting to everyone with a hostile tone.

Even if you don’t normally check qualification certificates it’s a good way to flush out the date they were achieved in this case without falling foul of discrimination claims.

If you don't do the drug test, you don't get employed. Anyone working for the site (for the main or any tier contractor) can be called for them, at any time. Anyone theoretically can be called to site and has to be known to be drug free. It's absolutely standard in construction, you could do serious damage, including death, to yourself & others by not being in full control. Like falling down a half constructed liftshaft.

Absolutely Im not through the whole thread yet but this is making me scream!

Its the usual naivete of this forum that they cant consider that lots of children do leave school at 15 or 16 still and go on and either dont do anything at all unfortunately, or they go and work for a mate or their family.

There are no consequences for not being in EET at all once you get to that age.

Exactly. I don’t care if she is 22 or 72- but if she has lied that is the important thing. Really she was pa to the MD at Disney? Etc

There are no legal consequences, no, as in you won't get charged or anything, but policy is if you leave school at 16 you should go into further training- be it an apprentiship, college or the armed forces. The amount who drip out altogether is probably higher than the number who secure a job with a family business.

That might be true, but in this case, the OP says the applicant claims to have been working for massive household name companies, from the age of 13 onwards. I don’t think enormous companies employ children too young to have an NI number as executive assistants.

Clearly a lie.

Same here. What I found daft with some online applications is that they specifically asked me not to include DOB, but then wanted dates when qualifications were attained, which made it pretty obvious how old I was 🙄

A bit late to the party here, but if she was born in 2002 and took GCSEs in 2019, she wouldn't have had letter based grades I don't think? They changed to a numbered grading system in 2017. Regardless, all sounds very bizarre!

I know what the law says, I work with children (many of whom do drop out way before 16 unfortunately)

My beef is with the presentation by many posters that 'she couldnt have done x or y because you cant leave school' or 'you're not allowed to'

The point is, its irrelevant what the law says or what the expectations are, there are quite a number of young people who do not continue in any form of EET as I said in my post. There are some that go on to employment but whether they do or just become NEET, no one is marching these kids back to school!

I'd be listing out the questions and meeting her with HR. Ask the questions and watch her face.

If you don't do the drug test, you don't get employed. Anyone working for the site (for the main or any tier contractor) can be called for them, at any time. Anyone theoretically can be called to site and has to be known to be drug free. It's absolutely standard in construction, you could do serious damage, including death, to yourself & others by not being in full control. Like falling down a half constructed liftshaft

Ok construction would be another one alongside driving/flying things. But your last post implied you worked for Microsoft.

And how many office people would actually need to go to a construction site? That said, I have a friend who works in accounts and has to look into vats of product to see what's there. So in theory I could see that you might want to check she wasn't drunk or drugged up in case she fell in ;)

Some people have clearly just woken up!

I don’t put my age on my CV and I convert O levels to GCSEs if they are required. I also knocked 10 years off, so the job I had when I was 31 looks like it was a graduate job. I don’t think anyone now needs to know about my years as an accounts clerk or selling double glazing.

No, I sit in an office using Microsoft products, like the vast majority of people 🙄rather than driving a digger, which is what people envisage when you say you work in construction.

As long as she's doing the job right, who cares?

High schoolers can get jobs.
For all you know she did act as the executive assistant. Whether it be as a interning/vocational job or as a part time job/way to garner experience that ended up as a legitimate job.
You better be careful making a stink about something you didn't verify beforehand because it could become an HR issue.

Quite

The credulity of many posters is astounding. The op is not nearly as fascinating as the many, many posts from people who believe bluechips are hiring kids in their early teens as executive PAs, think blagging your way through an interview is the same as having what it takes to do the job and and don’t see lying as a biggie.

The ‘give her a go!’ posts are especially naive. You have an hour or so at most to interview a candidate you’ve likely never met before. Not only do you have to take on trust what they’re telling you (a brilliant answer to a skills question might mean great skills, and equally might just mean they know what they ought to do in a given situation), but previous experience IS what makes a candidate appealing very often. If someone says they’ve worked at a peer company doing a similar role to what’s on offer for five years, for example, then that’s very attractive. If that turns out to be a pack of lies, you reevaluate everything. In every single interview I’ve had post-entry level the interviewers have wanted me to walk them through my professional history, explain how my role fit into the wider organisation, etc. Not sure why so many posters think the ability to do the job is entirely divorced from actual professional experience.

Absolutely. Would these people feel the same if their husband deceived them in the same way?

Just shows how naive posters on here are and how many have never worked in a corporate environment