When Taylor Teepell applied for the job of Director of the Division of Community Development, a position within the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO), he did so despite not having had any experience with the two things that department oversees: economic development or land planning.
He didn’t even fill out most of the application form, including these key parts:
Click the education and certification section of Teepell’s application form to see its emptiness at full size.
Click the work experience section of Teepell’s application form to see its emptiness at full size.
Want to see his full application? It’s a public record, and the Miami Herald posted it online.
If you’ve ever had to deal with the DEO (I have, for what they call “re-employment benefits”), you know how particular they are about their forms, and how they insist on getting as much information out of you as possible. It’s very unlike them to accept a form this empty, even if Teepell did attach his resume at the end.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, and in a story that at least some of you will find depressingly familiar, he landed the job over Julie Dennis, who’d already been working at the DEO for five years and was considerably more qualified for the job:
When Teepell got the job, he was elevated over Julie Dennis, who was then named “executive staff director” and served as his top deputy. In contrast to Teepell, Dennis had a decade of community planning experience and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning.
In comparison, Teepell has a B.A. in Marketing. He could probably get a Ph.D. in self-marketing.
How much does the job pay? When he started in February 2016, the starting salary was $110,000, and when he left in May, he’d been given a raise, bringing it up to nearly $117,000.
An excerpt from the Chick tract It’s Who You Know.
As you can see from Teepell’s LinkedIn profile, he’s since moved on to become finance director of the New Republican Super PAC, which is chaired by Florida governor, rabid Republican and apparent human/python hybrid Rick Scott, and is hitching itself unashamedly to Donald Trump.
If you’d like to find out how he got the DEO job, the Miami Herald explains, and as you might suspect, it’s because of the people he knows: Rick Scott and Bobby Jindal.
…here’s a summary of the effort I put into landing my new job.
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Where we live that is an elected position. We're one of the few counties in the country where this is the case. There was a referendum that passed turning it into an elected post as a way to kick out the guy who had been hired for it. I guess anyone can win the election, but the current office holder is a licensed architect and is doing a very good job.