The Trouble with Telling Tales

In a recent post we told you about the finding of a City of Albuquerque Employee Equity Office investigation into the hiring of DMD Security Manager Mark Shepherd. In short, the investigation found that Mr. Shepherd had misrepresented his work experience, the city had failed to verify that experience, and there were significant interview irregularities involving candidate scoring documentation and a conflict of interest on the part of Nick Bakas who was on the interview team and was also listed as one of Mr. Shepherd's references. You can read the complete post here.

We have gotten our hands on a transcript from a hearing in August of 2006 where Mr. Shepherd was deposed. When asked about his job history Mr. Shepherd replied:

"I headed up the security division for a large corporate office and a company, private company based out of Boulder, Colorado."

Here's the problem... the 2004 EEOC investigation found the Mr. Shepherd had not been involved in "security-related work." Whoops! This is the trouble with telling tales particularly when the tale is the basis for your employment... you have to keep repeating it. In politics this often works. If the tale is told loud enough and often enough people start to believe it. In this case, it doesn't really work because there's a finding that says in essence that you lied on your employment application and a judge that can potentially bring you up on charges.

The Eye doesn't know all of the details of the hearing where Mr. Shepherd was deposed. We have no idea whether the claims being made are factual or not. However, this incident points out the reason you can be denied employment by the city if you do a little fibbing on your application. Managers who end up in these types of cases can and will have their credibility challenged. If you continue to propagate the same story, when it has already been shown to be a "misrepresentation," you are putting the city and yourself in jeopardy, regardless of the merits of the case against you. If you are under oath, you can also be charged with a little thing called perjury.