When It Comes To LinkedIn, Recommendations, Skills And Endorsements Matter

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

When I was buying my last car, I went online for reviews to see what owners thought of the make and model before ever contacting the dealer. People gave me a lot of great information that allowed me to feel comfortable with my choice of cars and negotiate prices. After all, people are very generous online when it comes to sharing information. This is so true with books, music, and scores of other things, including your expertise.

Recommendations, skills, and endorsements are a way of demonstrating social proof on LinkedIn for you and your abilities. Recommendations are long-form testimonials that people provide about you and your work. Because LinkedIn allows you to screen these before approving them for your profile page, no bad recommendations need to appear there. However, an organization can discern what it wants by looking at them — and they do look at them.

Imagine you were trying to hire someone and you saw that a candidate had been endorsed for a particular skill four times. Would you be as impressed with them as you might be with someone who is endorsed for it 40 times? How about 140 times? How about 440 times? There is an impact that people receive with skills and endorsements on LinkedIn and texture provided through…