Cleveland headhunter Kelly Blazek made national headlines last week for flaming a jobseeker who contacted her through a LinkedIn group.Blazek's victim didn't sit still for the abuse. She posted the headhunter's put-downs verbatim on several other Websites and they quickly went viral.
Blazek apologized for the breach of trust in a letter to The Plain Dealer. “In my harsh reply notes," she wrote, "I lost my perspective about how to help, and I also lost sight of kindness."
Blazek subsequently deleted all online traces of herself.
Ironically, only last year the headhunter was named "Communicator of the Year" by the Cleveland Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.
We all can benefit from the advice of Florence Hartley, author of The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, published in Boston in 1860:
"Never write a letter carelessly. It may be addressed to your most intimate friend, or your nearest relative, but you can never be sure that the eye for which it is intended, will be the only one that sees it. I do not mean by this, that the epistle should be in a formal, studied style, but that it must be correct in its grammatical construction, properly punctuated, with every word spelt according to rule. Even in the most familiar epistles, observe the proper rules for composition; you would not in conversing, even with your own family, use incorrect grammar, or impertinent language; therefore avoid saying upon paper what you would not say with your tongue."
