Another highly credentialed female candidate was overlooked for John Barilaro for a plum trade commissioner role to be based in New York.
The former deputy premier has withdrawn from the job, after intense scrutiny over his appointment only months after he officially left politics.
A new return of papers, ordered through NSW parliament, has revealed Kimberley Cole had met the Trade Minister Stuart Ayres over the phone in March.
In an email on March 16 booking in the call, Ms Cole is referred to as the preferred candidate.
But five days later, the CEO of Investment NSW Amy Brown replies stating she is part of the shortlist.
"I'd like to clarify that we don't currently have a preferred candidate for the STIC US role," Ms Brown wrote.
"We currently have three shortlisted candidates, and the Minister is meeting Kimberley in her capacity as shortlisted candidate only."
On her LinkedIn profile , which matches a redacted CV in the documents, Ms Cole describes herself as "an award winning, Hong Kong based, Global Senior Executive with 25+ years Sales & Marketing Leadership experience".
Her resume states she currently works for IT consultancy LYNK as their chief commercial officer and an executive board member, and was previously the head of sales, Asia at Thomson Reuters.
Ms Cole is also an ambassador for the organisation Women on Boards.
While giving evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into the process behind Mr Barilaro's appointment, Ms Brown said she "was in two minds" about another candidate, who ended up being runner-up for the role.
"I requested that Minister Ayres meet with … one of the short-listed candidates for STIC Americas who was not Mr Barilaro," she said.
"I wanted to see how that person presented themselves to a minister, to see whether or not they were likely to have the confidence of the minister in that scenario.
"I was present at the meeting, and by the end of that meeting I had concluded that they were not a good fit for the role."
Labor's leader in the upper house, Penny Sharpe said this raised more questions about the appointment process.
"There was yet another well-qualified woman who got to the shortlist of this process, in some cases was considered to be first candidate who did not end up getting the job, instead it went to John Barilaro," she said.
"It really leads to more questions being asked about this appointment and the involvement of Minister Ayres and Secretary Brown in relation to this process.
"And I expect that the parliamentary committee will look into this further."
An earlier round of recruitment identified another woman, senior NSW bureaucrat Jenny West, as the preferred candidate.
The new documents show Mr Ayres signed off on a brief detailing she was the preferred candidate in August last year.
That offer was later rescinded when the department started investigating whether the roles could be made into ministerial appointments.
The ABC has previously revealed that the first round of recruitment was suspended, with Amy Brown stating the New York role would be handled internally, the day before Mr Barilaro announced he would be leaving politics.
A spokesperson for Investment NSW said Mr Barilaro was endorsed by a selection panel after a “recruitment process including interviews, due diligence, reference and background checks”.
Transcript of confidential hearing leaked
Jenny West is due to give evidence to the inquiry on Monday, but Ms Sharpe has accused a fellow member of the committee of "intimidation of a witness coming before a hearing" by leaking a transcript from an in-camera hearing last week.
A front page story in The Australian has quoted Ms Brown's evidence from the transcript, in which she makes claims about the veracity of Ms West's experience.
Ms Sharpe said leaking the transcript of a confidential hearing was an "egregious breach" by one of her parliamentary colleagues.
"The idea that people cannot come safely to a committee is something that none of us should support and we have to make sure that all witnesses are treated with respect," she said.
"We simply want Jenny west to be able to provide information to the committee in a calm and mature way, no one should have any interest in attacking her.
"I'm just so disappointed that this has occurred."
The ABC understands other members of the Public Accountability Committee, which is running the parliamentary inquiry, are also angry that the transcript was leaked.
