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I have a rather interesting story. A few months ago my supervisor hired someone by himself -- i.e. no one in our team spoke to that person. He made an offer to that person (six digit salary) and then told everyone in the team about his outstanding background, including a Ph.D. from a top school. The main reason for extending an offer, our supervisor told us, was that the candidate had a Ph.D.
When some colleagues googled his name they found he had a felony conviction 10 years ago and had been fired twice for falsely claiming he had a Ph.D. I am all for giving people second chances, but this person had made too many mistakes and had continued to make mistakes.
When we pointed that out to the supervisor he told us to not mention it to anyone. The person's background check cleared. I assume that he only listed a B.S. degree and the felony conviction was too old, so the background check came out clean.
Now he's a coworker and has built a reputation for having a different recollection of matters than everyone else in the team, is very rude and aggressive and takes others' work and sends it off as his own without copying anyone. We have tried to talk to him and got promises of "work relationships based on trust and respect" only for him to go back on his words and not apologize for his behavior. The position does not require a Ph.D. so we cannot go to HR. Colleagues in other groups of course know all this (thanks to Google) and laugh at how inept our group is.
There is nothing illegal here except that my supervisor perhaps cannot parse resumes and is impressed by degrees. But this makes other colleagues (who have more experience, more relevant experience and advanced degrees from top schools) very upset and/or demotivated. The supervisor continues to treat this new hire as the best thing since sliced bread. I am doing my best to ignore it, hoping the charlatan will self-destruct over time. I was never a fan of workplace policing but the work environment has been rendered unhealthy due to this recent hire.
Wondering if others have faced similar situations and if there are other angles here that I am not considering.
Last edited by polymathBagpiper; 10-24-2010 at 09:01 PM..
Reason: typo
This guy is a hustler, an operator. He knows how to work the system. He knows how to stay thisclose to the line and maybe, when nobody is looking, stick a toe or two over it.
For some reason, I find people like him interesting.
Forward your evidence to HR in an anonymous way like dropping off or mailing print outs from local news stories to their office. There's a time and a place to exaggerate a resume but this guy went too far.
If he had this background but was doing his job and not bothering anyone, I would say leave him alone. Based on what you've wrote, I wouldn't hesitate to contact HR. You also should consider passing this info along to your bosses' boss. (Who would that be?)
My advice is just to do your job. They are hard to come by these days.
Focus on your personal life. Karma will get this guy, in the end.
Yeah, that is what I tried to do for a couple of months. However, now he puts words in my mouth and claims I agreed to something when I didn't even talk to him about it and has different versions for different persons. We have insisted on every communication happening via email and that just generates lots of emails every day (but with flip-flopping within a long email thread!) It's hard to sit back and ignore it when someone's trying to tarnish your reputation like that. That, aye, is the rub!
I don't understand why your boss didn't mind being lied to about his credentials. Had I found out someone I hired lied about his credentials I'd reverse that decision! I'd even champion the cause to hr if need be.
Bosses do not like to be wrong. I worked with a horrible woman, they knew hiring her was a mistake...so, instead of firing her, they just promoted her out of our office, to a higher rate of pay, an easier job, because she was so incredibly stupid. Love it...
Bosses do not like to be wrong. I worked with a horrible woman, they knew hiring her was a mistake...so, instead of firing her, they just promoted her out of our office, to a higher rate of pay, an easier job, because she was so incredibly stupid. Love it...
You just described what happens at my job perfectly. Also we saved our bosses butt when he cleared a project that didn't meet the reqd specs. His thanks? He chewed our arses for 'making him look bad.' We saved his job, but it nearly cost ours! I do not understand the mentality of some managers!
I do not understand the mentality of some managers!
You bruised your boss' ego. They like to think they're in control even when they make mistakes. Last thing they want to hear is their subordinate being right and them being wrong.
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