What value does a LinkedIn recommendation add? How much weight does it carry?
I have a few recommendations. I’ve seen some people with dozens or hundreds of them. What does this mean?
I have given recommendations to people when I know them well and believe what I am saying to be true and accurate.
Oddly, just recently I’ve seen a recommendation for someone I know well (Person A), written by someone else I know well (Person B). The recommendation was complete fantasy and totally unfounded. Person B wrote the recommendation stating that Person A was an amazingly productive worker. He improved the work flow and processes and procedures in the company and in general made the department a much better place.
In reality, Person B wasn’t in the same department and Person A was fired due to incompetence.
Will an employer hire Person A based on what was written about him? Or, has the LinkedIn recommendation already gone the way of the photocopied recommendation? Anyone can write his own recommendation on what may or may not be company letterhead and forge a signature. No one would be the wiser.
And if a hundred people have recommended you, does that mean you are a good employee or you are just very popular and have a lot of friends?
I have been a keen and avid user of LinkedIn for just over one year now, using it primarily as a tool in my current search for my next career.
Being that LinkedIn is said to be “The Professional Social Networking Site”, I cannot agree more with the suggestions raised in this article. In addition to providing and accepting truthful endirsements, I also believe that each and every recommendation should also be completely genuine.
I am aware of an individual who simply hands out endorsements for people that were met over a cup of coffee; it’s as if this person is at a continuous job fair handing out business cards! What is a recruiter or hiring manager to think if he/she were to look back at the LinkedIn Profile of the endorser only to find that the two parties never worked together in any capacity.
Can this situation lend doubt to a candidates overall honesty?
I am also very leary of back-to-back endorsements that I often see in the updates on my Homepage.
Hope this was enlightening!