LinkedIn just released a new feature: LinkedIn Endorsements. Today is the first day that I have spotted this new feature. It appears when you visit a person’s LinkedIn profile. Upon visiting, a box appears above their profile where you can choose which of their stated Skills & Expertise you endorse.
LinkedIn states: Now you can endorse your connections for their skills and expertise! Your picture will appear on their profile next to what you’ve endorsed.
This is how the new LinkedIn Endorsements functionality looks:
The Skills and Expertise section is a relatively new area on the LinkedIn profile. It replaces the old Specialties section where people listed their “skillsets” as a free form list. Skills & Expertise takes the specialties concept a step further by collecting this information and providing these keywords as suggestions to other users. In this way, LinkedIn users can “discover the expertise that other professionals have and see how the demand for these skills is changing over time.”
The issue with this is that you are relying on a person to accurately describe their own skills and expertise. Everyone considers themselves an expert regardless of their true abilities. This new functionality aims to provide a more unbiased way of rating a person’s true skillsets by polling their peers.
I predict this information will be used in ranking search results within LinkedIn’s search engine. Currently, LinkedIn’s search algorithm ranks results by the number of times keywords are repeated on a profile. Obviously this method doesn’t provide the best results.
Many people use LinkedIn’s search to find potential prospects, candidates, vendors, partners, etc. Since the name of the individual is not usually known by the searcher, keywords are entered into LinkedIn’s search engine. It behooves LinkedIn to provide the most accurate search results. By having users rank others by Skills & Expertise (keywords) they are ensuring the results are more accurate and honest. This is a huge step for LinkedIn.
This new functionality comes quickly on the heels of a re-skinning of LinkedIn’s Website, a redesign of the profile and company pages and a retooling of their navigation bar. It’s great to see LinkedIn stepping up to the plate and bringing their users even more compelling reasons to use LinkedIn as a business tool.
What do you think of these new changes? Please tell me in the comments of this post.
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Great video Donna. I notice however when I search for someone while in my profile it does not bring up the endorsement box. Is there some setting I need to change to enable this? I assumed it would be automatic.
Are you searching for someone who is connected to you? Endorsements only show for people who are directly (1st degree) connected to you on LinkedIn.
I don’t have the Endorsement capability either. No box, but I see the Skill list at the bottom of LI profiles. When I try to click on the + or the word Endorse, nothing happens. My pic is grayed out at the right side + column.
So what is going on? Is this a rollout and I need to wait? Is there an email announcement that I need to open and click on a link for an invitation?
Any assistance would be most welcomed! Thank you!
Hi Miller! I just checked out your profile and you do have endorsements. Keep in mind you can’t endorse yourself or people who are not first degree connections. Try visiting a person’s profile that you are directly connected to and see if LinkedIn allows you to endorse their skills. I hope this helps!
This is a very helpful and to the point demonstration of LinkedIn’s new endorsement feature. That’s so much for the article and the “how to” video.
Problem with endorsements is that people get the option to endorse a person, but the endorsement only goes to the one skill listed unless they specifically hit certain areas. So everyone is endorsing me for LLC work, but the M&A and corporate work is getting endorsed. Would like to see LinkedIn fix it so people actually choose the areas to endorse as opposed to just go with the default provision.
How can I see who endorsed me for a skill which is not ranked enough?
Hi Jack! It seems if you have the old LinkedIn profile, you can’t… but when you get the new profile (it’s being rolled out slowly), you can see who has endorsed you. All you do is get into the Edit profile mode and click on the number next to the skill and a popup window will show you the person who endorsed you. Again, it looks to only be available to those people who have the new profile.
Great answer. Thank you.
Although the endorsement part is helpful, I don’t want LinkedIn to automatcally request endorsements on my behalf from my contacts. Is there any way that this feature can be disabled? I would rather not have the endorsement section available at all than to have automatic requests sent out.
Hi Rolf, Thanks for writing! As of right now, there is no way to turn this functionality off. I believe that this new endorsement feature is not at it’s last iteration and I suspect we will be seeing some changes soon. Perhaps what you are requesting is a future update.
Thanks for writing!
Just my two cents on this; the endorsements feature is meaningless. I’ve got endorsements for skills I don’t have from people I haven’t worked with directly. Knowing this I automatically disregard other peoples endorsements.
I should be able to choose which endorsements I accept, without that level of control the feature doesn’t add any value; quite the opposite in fact.
This is a great article and very helpful thanks for sharing. Where does it end with LinkedIn? I think it should be enough to recommend someone you have worked with, without the need to pick and choose their best abilities. Anyone can recommend or endorse a fellow co-worker. Until the individual is in the job where a particular skill is being utilized however, the potential employer has only the say-so of the potential employee and individual who endorsed them.