On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 1:21 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
The identified mistakes/shortcomings of the whole process:
- In the background check performed by the HR and the legal department we
have not had a specific PR check as an immanent part. While it sounds like common sense (doh! I know, although many organizations don't actually do that), it seems that each department focused on their own turf mostly- HR confirmed the highest expertise, and the legal department confirmed no legal threats.
How are we going to address this in the future? We have already prepared a modification to the process, including a PR subroutine into the larger background check process.
- The BGC has failed individually as well, for a rather silly reason. An
often returning argument has been that we must have known about the case, since it is high in google.com results. The initial screening was conducted by Alice, Frieda, and me. None of us is a native English speaker and our searches included google.de, google.it and google.pl - none of them included the information about the controversy in the top 10 results at the time (btw, the pando article is clearly trending up and is in the top 10 results in google.pl now, while it was not even a couple of weeks ago).
I think this is almost exactly wrong. The lesson here should not be that the Board failed to take public relations into consideration when co-opting a new member. The message is that the examination of candidates failed to turn up really quite substantial allegations of a lack of integrity and ethical leadership. If your background check process looks for expertise or criminal history but doesn't examine work experience for serious failures, then the background check process is broken. Adding a "what will people think?" 'subroutine' is not a solution.
The question of in what language did BGC members search Google is bizarre but really a distraction - the Board should ensure that a superior background check process is in place, and neither the Board members nor the community should have to rely on Board members Googling in their spare time to turn up major defects in finalist candidates.