LinkedIn Skill Endorsements

Daniel's Unofficial Guide to LinkedIn Skill and Expertise Endorsements

I have seen no official (or unofficial for that matter) guidelines on how to use the skills and expertise endorsements. So I am going to outline how I see them and how I judge whether I will or won't endorse someone for a particular skill.

I have read a lot of derisive or dismissive comments about the system, but I am not sure where that is coming from. I find the skill endorsements just another aspect to LinkedIn, which shouldn't ever be your sole deciding factor on a hire or engagement with an individual. To listen to some of the complaints you would think LinkedIn adopted Facebook's privacy policies and opted you back in to sharing to the world.

Here are some choice words/phrases:

thoughtless endeavor
clutters profiles
meaningless
painting by numbers
zero credibility
virtually worthless
complete waste of bandwidth

And this is only from one page! I think maybe some people should get more fiber in their diets.


Anyway, I can see some benefits to the system. For instance, if someone is marketing themselves as an NFS Guru with 30 years experience, yet only has the skill NFS endorsed by one person...that raises a red flag. More than likely, the endorsements are going to reflect the longevity of the skill...or at least one hopes.

There exists the possibility of keyword searches by recruiters or others interested in finding someone with a certain skill. I don't know if the search functionality exists(I only have a basic account), but if you have 'expertise requests' listed under your contact options I would think it makes sense to be well endorsed for specific skills. Imagine a scenario where an individual or company is having trouble with an NFS implementation. They search on LinkedIn for NFS Guru and find our friend above who has the 'expertise requests' contact option set and has 45 endorsements over the span of his career for this skill. I would think that is a benefit.

Also, you are in complete control of what endorsements are displayed on your profile page. Got an endorsement from someone you don't know?(Which also begs the question, how or why are you "linked" to that person? It's what I call your 'LinkedIn Purity') Than just delete the endorsement. No point in whinging on about it.

On the Integrity of My Endorsements

I know people live and learn and gain skills over time, but when I see someone with a listed skill for something that they famously did not possess when I worked with them, I chuckle. For instance, a former cow-orker lists 'Disaster Recovery' as a skill, yet the one thing that stands out for me is his 'engineering' of a system with zero redundancy, zero backup strategy, very little documentation and questionable source code on a platform not supported by our team.

The fact it became a key piece of a much larger system tied to revenue really drives it home. But here is the rub; he may have built the system as a proof-of-concept and people that didn't know better rolled it out before it was fully fleshed out. Either way, I can not in good conscience endorse him for this skill. He may have learned his lesson, and now he makes sure that every ounce of work has a full DR workup, but since I didn't witness this, I will just skip this one.

I also see skills for people that I am pretty sure they have, but either they gained that skill after we worked together or I just have never experienced it first hand. In both those circumstances, I will not endorse. Well, for the most part. There are certain skills that I have not personally witnessed(someone setting up a SAN for instance) but I know that this person has done it successfully on several occasions. Depending on my relationship I will probably endorse them.

While I have yet to receive any solicitations for endorsements, when it does happen I am very unlikely to answer unless I have legitimately overlooked the person or a skill that is very core to how I view them.  This is also part of the LinkedIn Purity.

Feature Requests

It would be nice if you could indicate the level of confidence you have in a person's skill or expertise and how much personal experience you have with this person's skill/expertise, like a star rating or color code(ie, terror alert?) Sometimes it is obvious. If Bill Smith in marketing endorses you for NFS, that is not even in the same league as an endorsement by Bill Joy.

Having a "Don't show me this again" button on the endorsements would be nice as well.  Anyway to ack you saw it, it doesn't apply or you don't like that person and will never endorse them for anything but a lobotomy.