Cleveland Job Bank: Kelly Blazek’s Road Rage on the Information Superhighway

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CNN’s Brooke Baldwin speaks with millennial expert Marian Salzman about a LinkedIn rejection email from Kelly Blazek, the Cleveland International Association of Business Communicators’ 2013 Communicator of the Year, that went viral.

Yes the job market can be brutal out there …

Kelly Blazek’s astonishingly rude response to college graduate Diana Mekota’s inquiry to network in Kelly Blazek’s Cleveland Job Bank …

“We have never met. We have never worked together. You are quite young and green on how business connections work with senior professionals. Apparently you have heard that I produce a Job Bank, and decided it would be stunningly helpful for your career prospects if I shared my 960+ LinkedIn connections with you – a total stranger who has nothing to offer me.

“Your invite to connect is inappropriate, beneficial only to you, and tacky,” the email continued. “Wow, I cannot wait to let every 25-year-old jobseeker mine my top-tier marketing connections to help them land a job. Love the sense of entitlement in your generation. And therefore I enjoy denying your invite, and giving you the dreaded ‘I Don’t Know’ [scribbled-out name] because it’s the truth.

“Oh, and about your request to actually receive my Job Bank along with the 7,300 other subscribers to my service? That’s denied, too. I suggest you join the other Job Bank in town. Oh wait – there isn’t one.” The email ends with “Don’t ever write me again.”

After Mekota tried to contact Blazek again, she got no response. Then Mekota posted copies of the rude response on reddit, imjur and Facebook. As one would expect, sharing of the cranky response went viral.

Then she got a response from Blazek, who deleted her own social media profiles. One can imagine all the hate messages in her inboxes.

Kelly Blazek’s apology:

“I am very sorry to the people I have hurt.

Creating and updating the Cleveland Job Bank listings has been my hobby for more than ten years. It started as a labor of love for the marketing industry, but somehow it also became a labor, and I vented my frustrations on the very people I set out to help.

Hundreds of people contact me every month looking for help, and as the bottom fell out of the job market, their outreach and requests demanded more of my time. I became shortsighted and impatient, and that was wrong.

My Job Bank listings were supposed to be about hope, and I failed that. In my harsh reply notes, I lost my perspective about how to help, and I also lost sight of kindness, which is why I started the Job Bank listings in the first place.

The note I sent to Diana was rude, unwelcoming, unprofessional and wrong. I am reaching out to her to apologize. Diana and her generation are the future of this city. I wish her all the best in landing a job in this great town.”

“Blazek is not just a headhunter or a recruiter, but a senior communications executive who enjoys helping others in the profession.”

Quote from Cleveland Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators in 2013 when Blazek was awarded communicator of the year

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