The first sentence of the article mentions:
> Activision Blizzard Inc. has fired or pushed out more than three dozen employees and disciplined about 40 others since July as part of efforts to address allegations of sexual harassment and other misconduct at the videogame giant, according to people familiar with the situation.
(Emphasis mine.)
For those who more closely follow Blizzard and/or WoW news (fansites such as MMO Champion and Wowhead), several people were known to be fired or left the past year. So the date January 2022 is entirely arbitrary by you, but also, important to note the following: some people left because of the scandal while they were not the culprit, or other reasons (many people were laid off because of, well, I can't say bad financial result but that was the reasoning. Also, state of games in decline). Just because someone left Blizz in 2021 does not mean much, but if you look into certain people who did leave in 2021 then, yes, you will find allegations. End date alone is meaningless though, and quite frankly falls under the definition of guilty by association.
Do you keep track of the month and year of every corporate scandal, and compare it to the resume of all applicants? Or do you just say "oh, you worked at Blizzard huh, do you play WoW?"
Presumably some of these folks will need to try to find work ASAP.
But months or years down the road chances are slim it’ll stick out.
How would you know this?
I sure as heck have never volunteered information like that.
Not sure what the repercussions are of simply lying to the interviewer though.
I suppose that may mean something if you're playing detective with a former Blizzard employee's resume, but I'd be cautious in reading too much into "if the former employee is eligible to be employed there again" generally. I know of a company where HR policy is that all involuntary separations are ineligible for rehire, including things like downsizing layoffs.
Most likely to avoid someone returning on false pretenses to retaliate against being downsized in the firstplace.
"Lowest performers" doesn't imply bad performers (e.g. a strong team of A & B players).
Also downsizing can happen in different ways. For instance: "we're closing this whole site and laying off everyone who works there," or "this project failed [due to bad leadership], so we're laying off the whole team."
1) Anyone in the industry presumably knows about this news. If someone’s end date at Activision Blizzard is January 2022, they’re going to have a strong suspicion.
2) Backchannel reference checks (very warranted in this case) will likely confirm it. Activision Blizzard wouldn’t confirm anything other than start and end dates and any candidate-provided references are going to say good things, so it’s important to network and ask somebody who worked there at the time.