Theorem: when your former sysadmin can't hide his track better than that, you *know* this pink slip was not wasted paper. Corollary: don't fire a good sysadmin...

Corollary's corollary (in the light of current economics): don't hire a good sysadmin in the first place. Crap, this is getting complicated. Looks like they made the good decision: hire only crappy sysadmins, then sue the hell out them if they misbehave. Your systems might be vulnerable, but you will get your money back. C'mon, you know it (almost) makes sense.

Typical everyday business as usual in British IT. The CV selection and interviewing process in UK puts emphasis on "experience" and the skills are mostly irrelevant. The interviews themselves mostly revolve around "have you worked with this, what do you think about it" and so on. In fact in the 5 years from 2001 to 2006 I have had only one British hiring manager asking proper in-depth questions on the subject matter. Rest was touchy-feely b***sh*t.

So no wonder that faking his CV got him a job. What is sad is that the person who was really at fault here - the one who interviewed him and did not spot this at the interview did not get fired.

Why the hell didn't ESP* check this guy's references? I really do think that sometimes bullshitters gravitate towards one another, and the fact that a company can emply a secondrate fraudster without spotting him, as such, tells you as much about that employer, as much as it does about the employee. A quick Google search for his name reveals a criminal record for issuing bad cheques.

It really makes me think that Googling an potential IT supplier's own employee names is a good way of winnowing out second rate IT suppliers. If you can spot how crappy their employees are, when they can't, you're a long way towards avoiding being sold a polished turd - by yet another second rate IT supplier.

So he claimed to have a Master's degree, claimed to have worked with the government, and they didn't check up on any of this? Whoever handles the company's HR might benefit from a training course in how to pick up the phone and check on people's backgrounds a bit more, by the sound of it...

EPIC FAIL.

Maybe the company should learn to upgrade their security and be more careful when firing people who have had access to their systems...

Just go here:

http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/job/796055/it-infrastructure-engineer/

Print it out, hold it in your hand.

Hey presto, you've held a government job! How long you can hold the position is up to you.

Its very hard to ever be 100% sure about an employee untill you have worked with them for a while, and it is often necessary to make quick decisions on instinct in order to secure the right staff. (probably less so this year as employment market changes). I dont think it is uncommon for references to be taken up after an employee has started work. and have every sympathy for this employer.

Let's get this straight.

1, No technical interview.

2, No checking his qualifications.

3, No checking his references.

4, No real security stopping an IT newbie from hacking the company from outside.

5, No-one in IT savvy enough to consider removing his logins from the system when he's sacked.

...and he worked there writing shitty code for three weeks before they checked his work and became suspicious enough to sack him?

Who runs the company anyway (and are THEIR qualifications real?!?)

ps. Why does every other news source state that he worked as db dev and El Reg has db admin? Do you have inside information that we're not party to? I think we should be told.

There's a bit of a difference between being 100% sure and being so dismayed with someone's performance that they're let go within 3 weeks. Comments about how hard it is to judge someone's ability in an interview may be correct, but this doesn't change the fact that the individual concerned had made up his past experience and certification details *and wasn't caught out doing so*. That's a failure of HR right there.

The bumbling, inefficient, head-in-the-clouds, ivory-tower-inhabiting Civil Service do that, and no real-world commercial enterprise would dream of emulating them. I had to show *all* my certificates to HR at MAFF - twice, once when I joined as a temp, and again when I was made permanent.

My father, on the other hand, worked for several companies over the years. No one ever asked to see his degree certificate, or any other proof of his educational credentials.

Maybe asking for proof of qualifications is an unwritten no-no, like giving limp handshakes, or ordering half pints.