A profile on LinkedIn is becoming a more and more important tool for establishing contacts or looking for new employment. This professional social network currently has more than 135 million users and every second another two people join, especially managers.
As well as the usual biographical information, such as education or previous experience, an important part of the profile are recommendations from other users. For each job that users fill in in their profile they can ask for references from people that they worked with at the time.
How much weight do these recommendations have with recruiters? Does it do you harm if you don’t have any recommendations in your profile? How many recommendations are too many? And how should a recommendation actually look? Forbes.com put these questions to a spokesman from LinkedIn, several career coaches and recruiters. The result was an article entitled Everything You Need To Know About LinkedIn Recommendations. So what do you need to know?
Recommendations from other people will help you
Recruiters take note of recommendations. They won’t hire you just on their basis but they can help.
A lack of recommendations won’t hurt you
Recruiters know that lots of people do not want to make too much information about themselves public. Therefore they won’t exclude you just because you don’t have any recommendations. However, the situation is slightly different with self-employed people and small business where recommendations from satisfied customers can help them a lot.
Writing recommendations for other people can help you
Recruiters look for potential new candidates for positions that they are trying to fill among the people writing recommendations. So if you write a recommendation for somebody, your chances of attracting recruiters’ attention increase.
Recommendations can help you get promoted
A set of recommendations from colleagues and clients will help you as part of your performance evaluation and in your further career. All you need to do is show them to your superiors.
You should ask for recommendations in person
LinkedIn enables you to send recommendation requests with just one click of the mouse. But you should make your requests personal and therefore either first of all call the person in question or at least delete the pre-prepared text and write a personal request. You can suggest how you think the request should look.
Only ask users who you really know
Asking for a recommendation from somebody who you only know slightly or who you only worked with at a distance is a waste of time for both of you.
Recommendations should be as precise as possible
Whether you are writing a recommendation for someone else or, on the other hand, someone has asked you to write a recommendation, try to be precise. Don’t write in general that he is a good businessman but, for example, that in the last six months he has exceeded his monthly quotas by such and such a percentage.
Collect recommendations from people in various positions
Your recommendations should show how you are viewed by people who work with you at various levels – superiors, colleagues, subordinates, suppliers, etc. But be careful you don’t have too many recommendations. In order for your profile to work for you, you should have around ten specific recommendations. Fifty or more will appear boastful.
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