Inquiry into Wilce hiring
September 13th, 2010 at 11:19 am by David FarrarNZPA report:
The State Service Commission will investigate how Stephen Wilce was able to be hired as the Defence Force’s top scientist without his credentials being properly checked and how he was able to obtain top level security clearance.
Prime Minister John Key, who is also the Minister in Charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service, told Breakfast on TV One that over that weekend he had spoken to State Services Commissioner Iain Rennie who would investigate. …
Mr Key said he was not happy about what had happened.
“Which is why over the weekend I asked Iain Rennie… to conduct an investigation looking firstly at the SIS – so specifically at this issue – but at the wider issue… The bigger worry is actually that this guy had access to top level security and therefore top level information.”
A lot of people are rushing to conclude that the employment consultants must be at fault. I would not rush to judgement there. I’ve employed half a dozen senior staff or CEOs using employment consultants. As the employer, you often do the reference checks yourself, as it can give you a better idea of how the potential employee will work out, any strengths and weaknesses etc.
What will be important is to establish whether any checks were done at all, and if so by whom.
Related posts:
- A further inquiry re Wilce is needed
- SIS failed with Wilce clearance
- The Wilce Inquiry Report
- SIS checks
September 13th, 2010 at 11:28 am
Interesting to see the State Services Commission doing the investigation with their woeful (and hilariously incompetent) of appointing dodgy CEOs and senior staff – going back years! Someone should write the book!
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 11:33 am
I am constantly astonished how few people reference check.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 11:34 am
If it wasn’t so serious for NZ security it would be funny.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Wilce was for some short period general manager of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Club in auckland, about 1996 from memory. How he got the role no-one knows, or will confess to knowing. His association with the club terminated abrubtly when some of the members took it upon themselves to check some of the more questionable statements he made about his sporting past, including having played for wales against the AB’s.
Vote:When that fabrication was exposed he departed from the club in some haste.
What astonishes me is that if some amateurs could expose Wilkes why couldn’t professionals in his employ do the same.
September 13th, 2010 at 11:54 am
All these people with made up CVs were employed by Helen Clark. Maybe we should check the resumes of everyone important employed between 1999 and 2008.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
I am amazed that a man like Wilce was able to penetrate so deeply into our nations sensitve security area’s without the appropriate checks and balances being conducted first.
Vote:My first course of action would be to charge him with identity fraud and then throw him into jail for several years.
September 13th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Perhaps the reason for these employment practices is that certain employment agencies are working for foreign governments. Their role being to place moles in postions of influence. Employers need to not only check the credentials of candidates but also the background of the directors of the employment agency. Data may be sufficiently blanketed and wont tell them much but at least it is the minimum one should aim for.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
I wonder what fee was disbursed to the employment agency for placing Wilce in his $350,000 a year position. Did NZ get value for its money?
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
berend 11:54 am,
Indeed, Berend.
Why is it that the socialist left never seem very removed from corruption, lies, misrepresenting themselves or others, rewriting history, employing people of dubious backgrounds, etc.
Of course, one doesn’t need to go much further than the current incumbent in the Whitehouse for a current example of the above.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
As the employer, you often do the reference checks yourself…
Maybe, that’s true for detailed reference checks that require technical knowledge of the applicant’s field. But we are not talking about some kind of obscure technical problem with his references. His references are laughable.
The employment consultants should have tossed his CV into the bin along with the usual stack of crazies that apply for any job. He should have been weeded out before the employer ever saw the short-listed CVs.
If the employment consultants had done their job competently Wilce would never have been hired.
Of course, if the SIS (etc) had done their job competently he also wouldn’t have been hired. However, the incompetency of the SIS (who would have thought?) does not excuse the employment consultants for their own incompetency.
The only way that the employment consultants would end up looking good (or remotely competent) would be if they flagged (some or all of) Wilce’s CV problems, but were over-ruled by the SIS or Defense Force. Which I suppose could have happened, but I’m sure that the employment consultants would have loudly told us all about it, if that was the case.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Momentum Recruitment put that man forward for the Defence position. The Momentum website discloses that the Rt Hon Jenny Shipley is a director of Momentum.
[DPF: Oh goodness gracious. And this is about as relevant as the fact the SIS Minister at the time was Helen Clark]
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Grist to the mill dear boy, grist to the mill. Such ensures the survival of you blog.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Just hearing him on the telly , he sounded like such a B/S artist..It wasn’t a matter of what he had done , it was a matter of what he hadn’t done..he seemed to have been everywhere and done everything..How could experienced people be fooled by such a person? There are quite a few people in prison like this..they are usually there for fraud..they tell so many lies their whole life becomes a lie.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Momentum did a bad job and they need to front up – a refund to taxpayers would be a start. The CV should never have got anywhere near the employer if they’d been doing their job – bot of course that would have required some effort on their part, rather than just clipping the ticket on the way through.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
My guess is he got in because of cronyism. It was who he knew.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
berend suggests:
We should be checking everyone’s CV who’s been hired through recruitment agencies. Few bother to read the CVs that come in – they put them through a program that looks for “keywords” (which, particularly in the public sector, are the same thing as “buzzwords”). Anyone who doesn’t stack their CV with BS is therefore likely to fall at the first hurdle.
Once upon a time you’d submit a CV listing your past positions, a bit of detail of what they involved, and some references. The employment consultant would read it, make a judgment as to whether you had the skills and experience that might be of value to their client, perhaps check a reference or two, interview you and then write a report of their own about you.
Now they increasingly want you to spend hours of your time “responding to the key attributes”. So in my case, for instance, with 30 years of journalism, broadcasting and communications work clearly listed on my CV, I’m asked to detail whether I have “highly developed communication skills”. No thanks… if some lazy dickhead isn’t going to read my CV and work that out for themselves, then they’re onbviously going to feed the whole thing into a program that looks for how many times I’ve used the bullshit “phrases-du-jour”.
The fact that in the past I’ve had a negative answer back within less than two hours of getting an email confirming receipt of said document, and before applications have closed, tells me all I need to know about the detail and care Momentum and most other agencies put into candidate selection. It’s simply put through the bullshit detector and, no bullshit having been detected, rejected.
In short, as shoreboy57 says:
It matters not whether Jenny Shipley or Michelle Boag is on their board… they don’t control operational practices, they simply ensure good governance. The “consultants” who get away with peddling bullshit canddiates with bullshit CVs every day of the week are the ones who need to be held to account for this and who knows how many other failures we have yet (and may never) know about.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Consultants, outsourcing, buck passing. Call it what you will. Someone is responsible for the hiring of this muppet. As usual it will be nobody’s fault.
NZ – the land of heaps of highly paid, shiny arsed monkeys with not a jot of responsibility anywhere to be seen, especially in the public service. A bureaucrats Nirvana.
“If I have a handful of silver it is because I work and my wife works, and we do not, as some do, sit idling over a gambling table or gossiping on doorsteps never swept, letting the fields grow to weeds and our children go half fed!”
– Pearl S. Buck (from the character Wang Lung in Buck’s novel The Good Earth)
“How do nations achieve veracious growth rates, puzzled politicians in the west want to know. Pearl Buck’s character, Wang Lung, answered the question in the quote above, but for the slow-minded policy wonk, we’ll simplify: They work. Moreover, their toils are of the productive kind – making cars, toothbrushes and belt sanders – as opposed to what the west counts as productivity – counting people, writing laws and tasering grandma at the airport. Put another way, producers outnumber parasites…….”
Joel Bowman
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Hooton made a few good comments about this on Nine to Noon.
Richard Griffin refused to fill in the form allowing himself to be SIS-vetted and his father in law who prepared nine budgets under Douglas? and Richardson never bothered to complete the form. So it never happened.
He also made the rather obvious but overlooked (including by myself) statement that the SIS is there to check susceptibility to blackmail, period. I’m still surprised they didn’t pick up what was clear to a journo, but you can in part understand but not forgive, why they let it through.
I have no idea what the man’s references were. It’s fairly clear though that he did at least an acceptable job till the journo blew him out of the water. So he’s probably not some common-or-garden village idiot. It’s an interesting case.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
The farce that CVs and employee vetting have become is one issue. But what was his work performance like? Five years is quite a while to notice how he is doing. And he was being sent overseas for training which presumably was considered good value.
Was he doing a good job, or was poor performance unnoticed?
Vote:Was he too hard/expensive to remove?
September 13th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
This was a top security highly sensitive position and required the most elaborate of checks. If his CV had lies in it then that should have been spotted. Clearly someone was able to find out after the appointment was made. I deeply suspect that the top brass in Defence found out about it, thought the lies were not that important and tried to sweep it under the carpet. I would be interested if Rennie looks into what did the top Brass know and WHEN did they know it. Bet he does not go that far. Bet he does a once over lightly thing, hunts down a scapegoat – someone suitably senior but not TOO senior and offers up the sacrifice to the Prime Minister.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
“I deeply suspect that the top brass in Defence found out about it, thought the lies were not that important and tried to sweep it under the carpet.”
Why is that, tvb?
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Everyone seems to forget that Clark lied on her own CV. What if the difference between trying claim you are a sportsman than trying to claim you are an artist. In case anyone thinks I am nit picking, there was a prima facie case against Clark.
Vote:September 13th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Somebody found out. Nothing happened, so it got leaked to the media.
Vote:September 14th, 2010 at 7:05 am
Yes, I think you are nit-picking, that was one of the most ridiculous campaigns against Clark. All you need to do is ask what her intent was, and the grossly over-wrought pettiness is obvious.
Repeatedly resurrecting a furor over f-all substantially diminishes the effect of more valid criticisms.
What-was-her-intent?
Vote:September 14th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Oh look petey gal has asked his 6,934th question on kiwiblog. Man this wacko gives a new meaning to the word nauseous.
Vote:September 14th, 2010 at 7:25 am
Good morning dad4justdiss, good to see you bright and cheerful this morning
I didn’t see you commenting on the proposed child support changes, maybe you’ve been too busy lately.
Mr Dunne said it needed to be fairer. “The options in the discussion document also seek to get a balance between the welfare of the parent who receives child support and the obligations of the parent who pays it,” he said.
Vote: