A few months ago, I began to get emails from LinkedIn that said, “Such-and-such has endorsed you.” I thought, “What is this? What does such-and-such know about our business. I guess I must be doing something right.”
Well, back in September 2012, LinkedIn announced a new profile feature called “Endorsements” which allows co-workers, clients, business associates, etc., with the ability to recognize an individual’s skills and expertise.
How does it work? By visiting a connection’s profile, you are presented with an Endorsement box. In the box you will see skill sets the connection has placed in their profile. If there is a skill set for which you would like to endorse them – and it is not there – you can add the skills or expertise. However the connection must approve these before they will go LIVE and appear under their endorsement area.
So how reliable are these endorsements? Over time, I have had to opportunity to sit back and peruse various profiles of people I know both personally and professionally. At first, I saw endorsements that I believed. I knew that the connection had those skills. I either know them from working with them directly or I know someone who has. However, as the feature has grown in popularity, I have started to notice it has turned into a form of “poking” someone so that the other person will endorse them. Poking is a feature on Facebook that was designed to nudge another person or to attract attention to a friend. It seemed fun at first, but then people started to get angry and wondered why that feature was even there – “it’s annoying” most people have said. And… Facebook has now removed the featured and most people haven’t even noticed it.
People are starting to loosely endorse connections . They may not necessarily know their skill sets. They want endorsements.
The bottom line: Know who is endorsing you and know who and why you are endorsing a connection. You want your relationships on LinkedIn to be authentic.