LinkedIn users have blasted the new endorsement feature – which allows contacts to add skills and expertise to each other’s profiles – with many claiming it has no value and is just ‘recommendations-lite’.
According to the business social network site, the addition is intended to make it easier to recognise people for their areas of expertise.
LinkedIn is splashing the feature across the top of users’ profile pages, asking, “Does … have these skills or expertise?” It then offers a long list of possible options that you can easily click to endorse that person for.
If you choose to skip the step, it then brings up another box asking, “What skills or expertise do your other connections have?” and listing four new users and what they might be skilled in. On users’ own profile page, they are now shown who has endorsed them recently at the top.
Many users have taken to the professional network to air their complaints about endorsements.
“As an employer, I don’t think that I’d want to hear an opinion on someone’s abilities that hadn’t been carefully thought out. What would be the point?” one noted on a LinkedIn forum. “As the feature stands, it’s really just eye-candy for LinkedIn, perhaps catching the attention of an employer but quickly fading away under detailed scrutiny.”
A second user bemoaned: “I think the endorsements are silly. It’s like ‘recommendation lite’. If you want to recommend somebody, take the time to write one. I am making it a practice not to endorse any skill that I haven’t had the opportunity to see someone demonstrate. I don’t see it as meaningful.”
And a third said: “I have been getting endorsements from legitimate connections but have also wondered at the value. They are related to skills but shouldn’t my profile speak more to my actual skill-set and how I’ve performed? I’d much rather have a recommendation written out by someone with legitimate experience working with me which I think has much more value.”
Meanwhile another added: “I have endorsements from my relatives who have no idea of my qualifications or even what project management or business analysis means. Also, strangely, I have been getting the same endorsement a dozen times from the same person. It certainly does not seem to have any value.”
Not everyone is so damning, however, with one supporter writing: “I would say this is a great way to endorse someone you know and whom you have worked with. I make it a point to endorse ONLY the person whom I know and worked with closely, also ONLY on the skills I know he has contributed, in my professional association with him.”
