Sometimes I wonder how politicians and those in public service
get there (and remain there).
Sometimes I wonder how politicians and those in public service get there (and remain there). I understand how people like Arnold Schwarzenegger could get elected, since most people vote without knowing more than a few cursory facts about a candidate. What I don’t understand is why it’s so common for people to hire other people based solely on what their resume says, or what they claim to be true – without truly scrutinizing the candidate or their credentials.
My bent here isn’t about the ludicrous gubernatorial recall. The chips will fall on October 7th, and as the old saying goes, “Americans get the government they deserve.” What I’m really itching and scratching about is the perplexing tale of the fraudulent coach – how someone who claimed to be a former NFL star got a job at Gavilan College. Not only that, but he worked there for five weeks before it was discovered that he had misrepresented himself.
So I wonder how this happened, and I’m sure many other people have the same questions. Is there any policy or procedure that must be followed when hiring people? Don’t the phones work at Gavilan? Doesn’t email work? And why would someone be hired and allowed to work before their paperwork was completed or a background check performed? Were there letters of recommendation or references? Did anyone follow up on those? Didn’t anybody do a little due diligence before hiring Fred McGrew? The answer, in this case, seems to be “no,” especially when you consider the clincher: The Social Security number used by Fred McGrew, the man passing himself as the ex-NFL player Larry McGrew, belonged to an elderly woman.
Let’s get hypothetical for a moment, and apply this problem to departments other than the football program. If someone applies for a job and has a name that just happens to be similar to a famous rocket scientist, heart surgeon, or computer whiz, does it mean that they should automatically be hired and that their credentials should be checked later instead of before the person starts work? What if Fred McGrew had applied to teach a medical or science-related course? The folks running Gavilan College should immediately take a cold, hard look at its hiring procedures and then find out where the breakdown occurred.
I don’t think anyone should be fired (except the ringer, of course, and he already has gotten the boot), but a few knuckles deserve rapping.
I know it isn’t the end of the world when some ringer gets hired to coach a bunch of guys who run, tackle, and throw and catch an oblong brown ball. Football isn’t the only reason why Gavilan College exists.
But it makes me wonder what other unqualified or misrepresented people have gotten jobs at Gavilan – in any department –just by presenting an impressive resume and telling a good story.
A few years ago, I posted a job for a position our department desperately needed to fill, and I received many resumes. After screening them and talking to the best dozen or so candidates by phone, I invited several of them to come in for face-to-face interviews. One respondent had an amazing resume, something that seemed too good to be true.
Everything on it was virtually an exact match for what I needed. After I spent about 10 minutes grilling him point by point about his resume, it became obvious that he hadn’t done even a tenth of what his resume had claimed. I told him that he had wasted both his time and mine and asked him to leave. The point is that I not only was responsible for making sure that I got the best candidate for my department, but I owed it to my employer to hire someone who could actually do the job, rather than waste the company’s money and risk tarnishing its reputation.
I believe it’s vital that the Gavilan Board of Trustees investigates this whole incident, and to find out which procedures need adjustment, which ones failed, and then straighten out the mess. They owe it to the students and to the taxpayers who fund the school, and they owe it to a fine school’s credibility.
A tech writer, editor and Web developer, Tom Mulhern is a longtime South Bay resident. He and his wife have been living in Gilroy for the four years. Reach him at tm************@ya***.com. Readers interested in writing a guest column should contact editor Walt Glines at ed******@mo*************.com or 779-4106.
