6 Ways You Can Take Control of Endorsements on LinkedIn

Endorsements on LinkedIn can be a good thing or just a very frustrating feature that can feel totally out of control.

Receiving LinkedIn endorsements problems

• You get endorsements for skills you don’t have
• You get endorsements from people you barely know and who certainly don’t know about those skills
• You feel like you have to accept the endorsements people give you because LinkedIn keeps shoving them in your face

You can take control back.

1. You can decide to not have endorsements on your profile at all.

 

 

 

Look at all the choices you have!   If you choose to not be endorsed at all, you are missing a valuable opportunity to engage with people on LinkedIn, to rank higher in searches for your expertise or for others to notice your endorsements. Some people in the financial industry are prohibited from showing recommendations or endorsements due to legal constraints. If you’re simply irritated by the endorsements, consider the other methods you have to control them.

2. You can decide to not accept some of the endorsements you receive. And you can delete them if they’re no longer relevant to you.

LinkedIn makes suggestions to your connections about what to endorse you for and can make some odd or irrelevant suggestions.   I had literally hundreds of endorsements for “non-profits” based (presumably) on my many years working for the University of California system. It was nothing to do with any skills I used or wanted to focus on so I just deleted it. I still get endorsements for that skill and LI now offers me the choice to “add skill to my profile” and I just skip it/delete it from the list of suggested endorsements.

3. You can ask for the endorsements you want

Maybe you’d like to get endorsed for a skill related to what you want to feature or related to employment you’re seeking. Sometimes you just have to ask people to endorse you for those specific skills. You may need to include some instructions about how to do that, rather than them accepting LI’s suggestions when they go to your profile

 Giving LinkedIn endorsements problems

• LinkedIn suggests skills you don’t know if your connection has
• You want to be nice and it seems churlish to not endorse someone when it pops up in front of you
• You don’t know how to make the darn box go away!
• You endorsed someone by accident and you don’t want your name appearing on their profile for that skill

When you go to a connection’s profile, most often LinkedIn will pop up a suggestion for you to endorse that person for some specific skills that LI thinks are appropriate:

If I click on “Skip”, I will get a new list of suggested actions to take so if you just want to get that darn box out of the way, click on the “x” at the top right.

 

5. I can click on “Endorse” which would endorse Marissa for all 5 of these skills. But I don’t actually know if she has those particular skills. I know she has leadership, MS Office and HR skills but have no clue about Community Outreach and Recruiting. Keep your credibility and delete the skills (just click on the “x” to the right of the skill you want to delete) you don’t know about before clicking on “Endorse.” This is likely to be much more meaningful to Marissa. She’s not going to value my endorsements for skills I know nothing about and, at best, may just think I’m being nice. Or she may think I’m an idiot and not someone to believe in anything else I do or say.

 

6. Make an even more meaningful endorsement by going to someone’s profile, scroll down to their skills section and then click on the “X” next to the skill you would like to endorse them for. This is also where you can remove endorsements that you’ve made in error. When you mouse over the skill you’ve endorsed them for, you’ll see “Remove Endorsement” show up – just click on that and, no, your connection won’t be notified that you’ve removed your endorsement!

Even more meaningful, why not write them a recommendation on LinkedIn?

I would love to talk with you about taking control of your profile on LinkedIn and how I could help you with your professional goals. Please call me for a free 30 minute consultation to see how I might be able to assist you.