LOOK One marketing recruiter’s painful lesson on being nice to newbies

While the industry’s pressing problem is finding good talent, with major firms and agencies doing their utmost to mine the best young talent from schools, the irony is that sometimes, the same makes it incredibly difficult for young job-seekers.Who hasn’t heard the usual hard-luck story from a rookie of being mis-managed by senior professionals?I recall a friend who, fresh out of school and at her first PR job, was humiliated in front of the office by the firm’s founder for not being able to operate a fax machine and was told by the same person that she looked like she was “on drugs” because she hadn’t put on enough make-up. She put up with many other similar insults to her appearance as well. I’m sure the story is not uncommon.But it looks like this marketing recruiter found karma biting back quite quickly when her mean message to a young job-seeker found its way into the media such as CNN and BBC, after the latter posted it on imgur.26-year-old Diana Mekota, looking out for a job, reached out to Kelly Blazek, who runs a popular online job bank for marketing professionals in Cleveland.According to CNN, Mekota had sent an email detailing her education, professional and volunteer activities and asking to join the 7,300-member jobs list, and had sent Blazek a LinkedIn invite. However, Blazek came back with the searing response below:The message has since gone viral after Mekota posted it on her blog, with Blazek having to post a public apology in the form of a statement to several news organisations after they published it. Ouch.