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The many uses of a resume
As a self-employed person who never needed a resume, I'm always amused by revelations about those who take embellishment of their personal accomplishments to absurd heights.
The latest comes from New Zealand, where a recent TV documentary outed a leading military scientist as a spectacular resume-faker. British-born Stephen Wilce was, until last week, the head of an 80-person team in the secretive Defence Technology Agency. But investigations have revealed that his CV is riddled with, as one Kiwi colleague put it, "massive porkies."
Among the bogus claims was that Wilce once worked for British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6. He said he had combat experience with the Royal Marines, and helped design missile guidance systems. That, too, is apparently untrue.
You would think lies of this nature would have been uncovered long before Wilce received security clearance. But how could he have possibly expected to get away with his most comic whopper, that he competed in bobsled at the Calgary Olympics?
Evidently, Wilce thought he was the only one who had seen Cool Runnings, and could boast to friends of his intimate acquaintance with the Jamaican team. As he told an undercover reporter on camera, "I know all the Jamaican guys . . . mad, absolute nutters."
For the documentarists, it was an easy takedown. All they had to do was call the British Bobsleigh Association, whose reply was, no, never heard of the guy.
So here's a person with major responsibilities in the area of surveillance and defence systems who can't lie better than a 10-year-old cookie thief. How did this clown get through any vetting process at all?
Well, the key, apparently, is who did the vetting. New Zealanders are already pointing at Momentum, the recruiting company that found Wilce, whose director happens to be ex-prime minister Jenny Shipley.
As baffling — or not, depending on your level of cynicism — as this episode appears to be, it's small potatoes compared to the bizarrely unknown resume of one Barack Hussein Obama.
Read more: www.calgaryherald.com/sports/many+uses+resume/3515464/story.html#ixzz0zXA1c3NB
