My hunch was right - rough diamond Lee shone through

The main obstacle to overcome was his CV. Not only was it littered with spelling mistakes, it also contained a huge whopper. Lee, ashamed about his lack of academic achievement, had lied about his education.

In an attempt to make it look less damning that he'd flunked out of Thames Valley University, he claimed to have spent two years there when checks revealed he lasted a paltry four months.

When he was rumbled, blushing to the roots of his hair, I felt for him. I dropped out of university myself and always found it hard to sum up my higher education in a simple line. I went back and got a degree, but more than once I've condensed that period on my own CV to avoid explaining a messy time in my life. I've since learned that having a piece of paper marked 2:1 doesn't bear much relation to how well I do my job but it smooths my path in job interviews.

The fact that Lee felt the need to lie about qualifications for a job that doesn't require any tells us all we need to know about what's wrong with recruitment today. Lee's work record shines - more so when you consider his educational black hole - and his grasp of business is intuitive. But in a world that prizes MBAs and modules, he felt insecure about his abilities being adequate to win him the job.

Rough diamonds like Lee have become too easy to overlook in our polished workplace. Employers who look beyond the veneer of good schools, a decent degree and a well-presented résumé for signs of raw ability are few and far between and modern computerised vetting techniques only make the situation worse. Most candidates these days don't get beyond the HR department's intray.

And let's face it, in real life Lee's misspelled CV wouldn't have made it past the slush pile for a top job. If, by some fluke, he'd reached interview stage, his garbled grammar and gauche mannerisms - from his legendary "reverse pterodactyl" impression to his "car salesman" wink - would certainly have earned him a rejection letter. Even Sir Alan's meat-and-potatoes selection committee found him hard to swallow.

It's what this says about who gets jobs in our so-called meritocracy that makes me feel uncomfortable. I've hired and fired people over the years, and I like to think I'm fair. But would I have called Lee back after an interview? Unless I'd had the wit to ask him to sell me a pen, I doubt it. And would I have turned my nose up at his duff education results and patchy spelling? You bet. But the loss would have been mine.