The Value of LinkedIn Recommendations
What value does a LinkedIn recommendation add? How much weight does it carry?
I have a few recommendations. All of these are from people who know me well and have worked with me extensively. I’ve seen some people with dozens or hundreds of them. What does this mean?
I have given recommendations to people when I know them well and believe what I am saying to be true and accurate.
False Recommendations
Oddly, just recently I’ve seen a recommendation for someone I know well (Person A), written by someone else I know well (Person B). The recommendation was complete fantasy and totally unfounded. Person B wrote the recommendation stating that Person A was an amazingly productive worker. He improved the work flow and processes and procedures in the company and in general made the department a much better place.
In reality, Person B wasn’t in the same department and Person A was fired due to incompetence.
Will an employer hire Person A based on what was written about him? Or, has the LinkedIn recommendation already gone the way of the photocopied recommendation? Anyone can write his own recommendation on what may or may not be company letterhead and forge a signature. No one would be the wiser.
And if a hundred people have recommended you, does that mean you are a good employee or you are just very popular and have a lot of friends?
True Recommendations
My advice is to protect your recommendations and referrals. Real ones can be valuable; however, false ones can not only cause immediate damage to you, they also cast doubt on all recommendations. Save your really good contacts to use as references who can be relied upon to tell a potential new employer about you in an honest and up-front way.