Question, when these people find a new job will the person hiring them know?
We’ve had candidates answer “You have to organise a fun evening for the 80 employees of this office. Your budget is $10. What do you do?” (a question meant to leverage their understanding that 70 of those 80 are insanely creative people who barely need a pen and paper to have fun) by suggesting going to a strip-club.
“What’s your favourite game?” is a staple (no answer is disqualifying in most cases); “Which character do you play?” the obvious follow-up when it’s an option. Candidates have suggested with blunt words that their pick characters in certain video games because they are female, well-endowed and barely dressed. The word “jiggle” was used, with a nervous laughter that I had to describe in my feedback as ‘cringey’.
If one of those people understand that they did wrong, I’m hoping they’ll give considerate answers to what are standard, common questions. I’ve never heard a full contrition during an interview (not on that matter) but that could be an interesting conversation. If they think that they did nothing wrong sexualising their colleagues, I would expect hiring manager to notice a nervous laughter, connect that to the previous employer and date of departure, and possibly prod discretely; “What do you think is missing in the game industry nowadays?” is a good follow-up. If they walked passed a female employee, I might ask her if she noticed any sideway look.
That’s the key part, though. Part of being a professional is knowing how and when to appropriately compartmentalize. Keep the video game heroine fetishes at home. If someone can’t keep that stuff to themselves for an interview, there’s no way they’ll be able to keep it to themselves on the job. Hire someone inept enough to discuss this on an interview and you’ve hired your next sexual harassment case.
If you ask me what kind of characters I play in an MMO (for example) then I'm going to honestly tell you that as a heterosexual man I find it pleasurable to look at a woman's behind while I'm playing.
That would be ONLY if you ask me "why do you pick females as playable characters?" however, I won't blurt it out of the blue.
I haven't harassed a woman in any capacity, in any setting, work or not, in my life. The mere idea to noticeably ogle a female co-worker or make sexual jokes towards them never even occurred to me. I learned that this is a thing for the first time in my life when I was 29 or so, when one colleague was fired for following two attractive coworkers around and not leaving them alone for a smoke break (WTF).
I think it's fair to give an honest answer if asked "why do you pick female heroines?". And yet it seems you'll flag me as a potential harasser?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you though.
If an interviewer specifically asks if you only play female characters and why, that’s pretty weird. If your response is something like “because I like their jiggly titties” instead of something like “because I find them attractive”, well, that’s even weirder and frankly not work appropriate.
But yeah, if the interviewer is pushing you to discuss your favorite characters, you shouldn’t feel the need to hide the fact that you play female characters. That’s your preference so whatever. That’s different from making it overtly sexual.
I'll only answer in a potentially compromising way if pressured by the interviewer -- and even then I'm much more likely to retaliate with "why are you focusing on the fact that I enjoy looking at attractive video game characters so much?".
So my previous comment wasn't very accurate, sorry. But on the rare occasion I think I sense people stigmatizing sexuality itself. Happy to have been wrong.
I share your concern about stigmatizing sexuality. People are people and should not have to pretend to be asexual.
Are these characters ones made available to them by the game developers? If so, what's the offence here?
If you want an actual female opinion on the candidate, have your female employees active in interviews. Then ask them what they think about the candidate. Your female employees are just as capable of evaluating candidates effectively as your male employees.
I wonder do female candidates get the same test? Not judging, just curious if there is a double standard, and why.
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.
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."
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.
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.
But someone's previous conduct in a professional role is absolutely relevant information when considering hiring them; that's why we have the concept of a reference at all. It's not stigmatising someone or being unfair to them to consider their prior actions.
If someone has previously been fired for harassment, then that doesn't mean that they should never be employed again. Rehabilitation is totally possible, but it's not an automatic thing: someone with that history should expect it to be a concern for future employers, and should be able to outline (as you would with any other issue) the steps they've taken to mitigate it and ensure the same behaviour won't be repeated.
Even if you take a very nihilistic view of company morality... for simple liability reasons, most places don't want someone fired for sexual harassment.
But it's trivial for those fired to not get caught. For example, it's likely some (not a majority, but some) people are leaving Activision Blizzard over what's been uncovered, they could claim to be part of that group. Or they could just lie and say the left earlier.
It'd be more than a little ironic to tar all of those with the "suspected offender" brush.
Would it be illegal to ask if they were fired in connection with this push? If the candidate answers no, they’re clean or a liar. If they demur or confirm, you have your answer.
So I presume HR had a chat and offered them a pile of money to resign - or if they didn't accept, indicated there would be an investigation into their behaviour.
Presuming they didn't choose option 2 and lose - when asked, nobody's going to say they left for sexual misconduct.
It saves the company some paperwork, and weakens the employee's case for taking them to court for wrongful firing. In exchange, the employee can truthfully tell future employees they weren't fired.
I think so; since they weren't charged with a crime, I guess privacy comes into play.
That said, if someone was sacked for sexual misconduct, nobody would hire them if they end up working with women. (I'm aware I'm gender-stereotyping here, but unless I missed it, all allegations were from women aimed at men. As is often the case.)
I mean, I don't want to stigmatize people and I want to believe that people can change if confronted with the error of their ways, but I've seen too many instances where it just didn't work like that. If they are still behaving inappropriately in the workplace, they should not be in the workplace.
"That person was fired because an investigation conducted by our company suggested they participated in sexual harassment."
IANAL, but basically it's not worth it. The company already has what they want: Not working with that employee. Anything past that is unnecessary risk.
Now, imagine the same scenario, except what your previous employer said was true. But you sued them anyway.
In both cases, you have the ability to sue. In both cases, unless there is some very strong and obvious evidence against you, a judge and/or jury might take your side.
From the perspective of one of your former employers, it's just not worth the risk to give details about why someone was separated from a company.
For the sake of my argument, I was conjuring the scenario where companies give either positive recommendations or bare minimum ones.
Even if you think something is true, someone else might contest that, and ask a court to decide. Court battles are costly and time consuming.
Problem is, in many countries, it's not a fact until a court has made a judgement.
Bearing in mind that the accused employees are technically and legally innocent, you are introducing a few problems. First, the disadvantages of calling these people criminals:
1. They can (and probably will win) sue you for calling them a criminal.
2. The resulting news that a court found against you is a bigger problem. You called someone a criminal, they sued you for it and won. Now you have to deal with the fact that as far as the public goes, you just fired and shamed innocent people.
3. Finally, after the news gets out, all the employees who were laid off in the same round and with same accusations now have legal precedent to challenge your accusations of criminality. And due to precedent, they will almost surely win.
Now, the disadvantages of giving only their start/end dates and job title when called:
[uhh, I can't think of anything ...]
It all boils down to "there is some risk in badmouthing them" vs "there is literally no risk, 0% risk at all, is saying nothing about their behaviour".
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights
Any HR person / lawyer will tell you providing a negative review of an employee, let alone with amount of detail, opens you up to liabilities that aren't worth it.
As an employer, I've been told that, if called, I should only provide the date a person started with the company, the date a person left, their starting and ending salaries (murky now given salary history laws) and whether they'd be eligible to be re-hired.
I ask any employee we fire for cause not to list us as a reference.
"Bob isn't eligible for rehire. Wait, I think the line cut out a bit there, I said Bob isn't eligible for rehire. Just wanted to make sure you got that: Bob is not eligible for rehire, no way, no how, nosirree."
For an extreme example, see Randi W. v. Muroc Joint Unified School Dist [1]. In that case, the plaintiff sued several school districts for fraudulently or negligently providing positive recommendations for a teacher who ultimately sexually assaulted her. The California state Supreme Court held that the school districts were liable because there was a substantial, foreseeable risk of physical injury to a third-party resulting from the misrepresentations.
For this reason, it is common practice for businesses to decline to provide a review and instead simply confirm a prior employment relationship and the dates of the employment.
[1] https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/14...
On the flip side, a reference has an implicit duty of skill and care to both the former employee and the person asking for the reference, so an overly-positive reference can also lead to legal liability from the person asking for the reference.
In some regulated industries the content and form of references is also regulated as well, for example see pages 11 and 31 of https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/SYSC/22.pdf
(None of this is legal advice)
Otherwise, many managers are happy to give a positive reference.
You could probably get a manager to give an informal reference “off the books”, not on company time.
If you help your manager succeed, they will almost always be happy to help you out with a good word. It’s only a few minutes so no one is worried about it being on or off the clock in my experience.
And yet I'm sure they try to keep anyone still employed from revealing their current salary to their coworkers.
https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/labor/discrimination/salary-his...
> California Assembly Bill 168 took effect in October, 2017. This legislation bars employers from asking job applicants about salary history when applying for a position.
I guess asking a reference isn’t quite the same as asking the applicant, but still it’s pretty inappropriate (if not illegal) and I’ve never heard of a past company revealing past compensation information.
We were only allowed to confirm dates of employment, and were required to direct all referrals to HR.
Our HR was run by lawyers, and was very tight about all kinds of policies.
In one case, I once had to lay off a couple of employees. HR policy demanded that I do a “perp walk” to HR, before telling them in an HR ambush. I felt that this was unnecessarily humiliating and dehumanizing (I was right. One teared up), and informed them in individual sessions in my office. HR wrote me up for that. They were technically correct, as this gave the employees the chance to cause havoc (except that I immediately walked them up, after informing them. HR was really concerned that I would say something legally liable -I did not). A big part of my job, as a manager, was to act as a buffer between my employees, and a rather coldhearted and dishonest HR department.
I will say that the company I worked at, had a very diverse workplace (below the Executive Suite), and harassment was not ever an endemic problem (of which I am aware). I know of a small number of instances (over 27 years), where people (men and women) were fired for inappropriate behavior.
There was definitely a “the rules only apply to the little people” thing going on, but not in any really significant way. HR tended to look the other way at the C-Suite doing things we mensch weren’t allowed to do, but they kept it quiet.
One of the things that I most enjoyed about leaving the company, was going to my former employees’ and coworkers’ LinkedIn pages, and giving them the glowing references they deserved.
Here's an old Dilbert comic, that summarizes it: https://dilbert.com/strip/2002-04-25
Eg in Germany, employers are both legally obliged to give a reference and to make it not-negative. It's a weird place.
The goal is generally to avoid litigation in the event that any such comments could be construed as libel or as interfering with the employee's future employment...and with good reason, since a lawsuit over a negative reference for anything other than a for-cause termination (such as sexual harassment) is generally very costly to defend against even if the former employer would win on the merits.