Endorsements vs. Recommendations

In September of 2013, I wrote an article about endorsements and recommendations. Since that time, LinkedIn has does some remodeling and the part of the article that addressed product recommendations is no defunct.

Let’s revisit endorsements and recommendations.

Who gives endorsements? Have you written any recommendations? Have you ever shared someone’s profile with another connection? Do all three from a visit to one of your connections profile. Pick the down arrow next to the “Send Message” box.

Endorsements

LinkedIn’s search algorithms use keywords from three locations to help boost you in the search results. One of those areas is your Skills and Endorsements. If you aren’t using the endorsements feature, you could be missing a valuable part of your ability for people to find you in a keyword search on LinkedIn.

I would caution you to carefully choose the items for which you endorse others.  I suggest that you only endorse them for the skills they have selected instead of suggesting skills for them. I would also encourage you to endorse them for the skills that you know they possess. I hear from attendees in my class that they don’t like when people endorse them for things about which they have no knowledge whether the person owns that skill or not.  If you are one of those people, take a look at this post about managing your endorsements https://time2mrkt.com/linkedin/linkedin_endorsements/.

Recommendations

Recommendations are harder to come by.  Many people find it difficult to ask someone to say kind words about them. In our hectic lives, we often forget to say kind words about others. Use the recommendation feature to write a sentence or two about someone with whom you have worked.  The recommendation just needs to include a few of the keywords that the person has used on their profile.

If you are seeking a recommendation about a particular thing, you could send the request and include the keywords in the body of the request. Heck, you may even want to include an example sentence or two that the person could just copy and paste!

Sharing

One feature that I think is often overlooked is the Share Profile option.  This lets you send the profile of your connection to another connection.  So many times, I am asked who do I know that does X. I go through my list of connections (that I have tagged) and share the profile.  Other times, a connection will ask me to recommend them to a group of my connections. I go to their profile, select share, and send it off with a short message about why I am sending the profile to them.

So many options from which to choose.  Which one do you need? All of them!

By the way, if you are feeling the urge, I could use a boost on my profile for just one of my skills. If you feel inclined, please visit my profile at http://linkedin.com/in/deereinhardt and click the Plus next to the word LinkedIn.