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Once upon a time, if you needed someone’s services, you had to do some serious research to find out if they were as good as they say they are. You’d have to ask for references, or do some internet snooping on a company so that you can be sure when you hire them that they know what they’re doing. At the end of a couple of day’s research, you pretty much know whether or not they were a good bet.
LinkedIn Peer Evaluation at your Fingertips
These days it’s even easier to find out this information, especially if the company or individual in question is on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a nifty little system where you can visit someone’s page, and endorse a skill they claim to have. Thus showing all of the visitors to that page that so-and-so knows everything about basket weaving, because YOU said so!
When I saw this feature the first time, I thought it was pretty neat. What a great way to get some street cred on the skills that I put on my profile! I also couldn’t believe how nice my contacts were being, taking the time to go to my profile, and put their reputation on the line endorsing little old me! I logged into my account to go to their pages, and return the favor.
I logged in, and was greeted with a new feature box on the top of my screen that showed a handful of folks that I was connected to. Below their picture was a question: “Does So-and-so know about ”. “Hm,” I thought. “Well yeah, this fellow is a painter, he knows all about painting…” and I endorsed. I glanced over the remaining three, and decided those were acceptable, and employed the super helpful “Endorse all” button at the bottom of the box.
Nice! Good deed done! Back to work. This went on for about a week, I’d see endorsements coming into my inbox, and I’d click the link and return the favor. After about a week I’d realized, “Boy, what a good idea they had, this has me coming to their site a few times a week, whereas I might have gone once a month before…” Then I realized, that was the plan all along, and I fell for it.
Hook, Line, and Sinker
“Ah well,” I thought. “At least it’s keeping me in touch with my contacts, and I’m helping them out.” Another week went by, and it was really more of an irritant than anything else. I started seeing the email notification and saying “Gosh, so nice of my brother’s friend from high school to endorse me for Microsoft Exchange… Not that I’ve ever done any work for him, or talked with him in over ten years…”
The final straw came when I got an endorsement from a sales guy that I used to know from a networking group. Nice guy, but I’d never worked with him, and never had more than a dozen conversations with him. He’d endorsed me for “Oracle”. Not only have I never done a single thing for this fellow, but I’ve never touched Oracle.
I really began to find this blind broad-brush “endorse all” to be not only irritating, but damaging. I never claimed anywhere that I had Oracle training or skills. What if someone contacts me for Oracle support at some point? I logged into LinkedIn again, convinced that something was amiss. I reviewed my skills, and found at least a half a dozen skills that I had no right to claim. (And never did).
Apparently, with the introduction of this new endorsement feature, someone was tasked with going through each and every profile, and creating “skills” to be endorsed. If only… No, more likely, some computer algorithm read through the profiles and created “skills” that were close enough.
You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, but You Can Never Leave
Fed up, I deleted ALL of my listed skills, the ones that were accurate, and the ones that were not. Content with skill-less page, I logged out and went about my business. It wasn’t more than a couple of days that I got another endorsement. I logged back in, and suddenly, I had skills once again.
I find the endorsement of skills you can’t really vouch for disingenuous and misleading. I know they think they’re doing something nice for me, but it’s dishonest and potentially damaging.
Do you ever click the “Endorse All” button? Have you reviewed your skills? Are you being endorsed for things you can’t do? Might be time to put an end to that.
Donna Lee is a nurse at a high care nursing home who was fed up with lack of simple but effective solutions and started DearJane store in Sydney, Australia. Donna found a good contact base on LinkedIn when doing so but the relative new feature of recommendation has really started to bug her.