Aren’t I the big star with over 1500 linked connections
and numerous endorsements.
Well actually the thing I court the most within Linkedin
is the recommendation from a connection. To be able to write a meaningful
recommendation that connection has to know me well and either have experienced my
work first hand or seen it as an observer.
So when I get endorsements from connections that have
never seen me doing my training stuff it means nothing to me. I really only
want recommendations because people will have thought about what they write rather
than just clicking endorse.
So whilst I may show an abundance of endorsements to
anyone checking out my profile, it don’t cut the mustard with me. Call me old
fashioned but it doesn’t seem right to be endorsed by people who don’t know me
that well and who haven’t been Dell’Armied ! It devalues the endorsements and it’s
the lazy person’s way – a bit like a Facebook like.
There maybe some algorithm type thingy going on here
with search ranking (which I don’t pretend to understand) which may benefit me
but from an authenticity perspective it just doesn’t sit comfortably with me.
Would love to hear what others think.
Posts
John, I so agree with you. Some of my connections, who like me, are training consultants, have endorsed me and then expect me to endorse them in return. Utterly pointless and valueless. I've tried to turn endorsements off but there is no option to do that. I'm happy to have a recommendation from a client but not a meaningless endorsement from a connection.
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty with endorsements, as you point out, is that they’re often from people with whom we’ve never worked, and my best guess is that they will quickly—if they haven’t already—become devalued. I can only guess that a number of my connections have endorsed me because they like my photos. Fair enough. But I’ve never worked with or for a number of these connections, and they can’t really speak to what I’m like to work with, either in personal terms or in the larger sphere of, say, problem solving. To my mind, endorsements are too easy to give and to come by, and I think written recommendations are far, far more helpful.
ReplyDelete