The concept of Endorsements on LinkedIn has been extremely popular but is it really helping your profile? Just because something is “the rage” doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s useful or even liked.
Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, is proud of how the new service has hit over 1 billion Endorsements just under the span of five months. He stated that it’s got people to actively engage on the website again rather than just the occasional visit every few years when a person is looking for a job.
There are a number of issues that employers that are looking to recruit have with Endorsements. The first of which is that now that it’s so easy to endorse someone, the act has lost its value. It’s a topic that’s constantly being discussed on Twitter, and the majority says that they’re either getting Endorsements from strangers and the volume of Endorsements makes them highly suspect.
The second issue is that even though LinkedIn has a team of data scientists constantly working to try and improve its algorithms, the skills that are highlighted on a person’s profile might not necessarily be relevant. Matt Asay, a hiring manager and blogger on ReadWrite, states that he would give absolutely zero weight-age to the stockpile of “Endorsements” because they’re basically synonymous with the “likes” that a person gets on Facebook.
Peter Rusev, the product manager for LinkedIn Endorsements, claims that the product is the greatest things since sliced bread, but the general public is of the opinion that Endorsements just create a lot of noise and not enough signals.
LinkedIn Endorsements might be the perfect way for colleagues and friends to show their support without actually taking the time out to write recommendations, but head hunters place absolutely no value on this new feature. The good news is that you can at least turn the feature off if you want to.
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