Do You Like LinkedIn Endorsements?

This question has come up a few times in the past few weeks, "Do you like the endorsement section of LinkedIn?" so I figured I would share my response here with you!

I like the idea of it. Endorsements make it easy to endorse someone for a specific skill (buzz word) without having to write a testimonial. While testimonials are great, they don't always have the necessary buzz words that people are looking for (nor do they usually fit in) when checking out someone's profile.

However, LinkedIn makes it too easy to endorse everyone for everything therefore diluting the value of endorsements. They also seem to discourage or make it less easy to write a recommendation for someone encouraging the use of endorsements over recommendations.

I have found many people complain because they are being endorsed for something that is not relevant or something they don't want to be endorsed for. They also don't seem to know that you can write in your own skills that you wish to endorse someone for. This is a great benefit, because LinkedIn tries to learn you as a person and sometimes gets that wrong.

I highly recommend that you closely monitor the endorsements you are given by others. About every other month I go through and remove the ones that are irrelevant or I don't want listed any more. Yes it is true that the more you have the more you come up for in search, but I would rather my endorsements be tight and specific than loose and confusing.