I used to love LinkedIn. I still do, but not that much. I login there once in a while to check out who looked at my profile just to get a kick that yes, I’m still somewhat important. Folks are checking me out :). Though it is becoming more and more irritating than being useful. One of the reasons behind it is the endorsement feature there.
Issues
Honestly, this is the most messed up feature in LinkedIn. Every single day I get endorsed by somebody. Not that I don’t like to get endorsed however the problem is that:
- I’m getting endorsed by folks with whom I have never worked in a professional capacity and
- I’m getting endorsed in the technologies I have never worked with.
This is what my endorsements look currently:
I can understand C#, WPF, .Net, Cloud Computing, and Windows Azure and may be, may be ASP.Net but Software Development Methodologies, WCF, Mobile Devices??? Really??? Come on guys, give me a break. If you know me, you would have known about this. But the cherry on top is ITIL!!! I had to actually look it up and here I’m getting endorsed for it :).
Another issue that I have with endorsement is more of a social issue. You see, somebody has endorsed me. Now I am in a social dilemma that should I endorse them or not? Will they feel bad if I didn’t?
Also I don’t have any control over who’s endorsing me. Any of my contacts can endorse me. I have been endorsed by few folks with whom I have worked in the past either directly or indirectly. An endorsement from them actually means a lot to me and that’s something I am really grateful for but in general I think it’s more of a nuisance than anything else.
Possible Resolutions
To start with, at least LinkedIn should allow me to specify whether or not I wish to receive an email when somebody endorses me.
Better yet, it should let me decide whether or not I want to be endorsed.
Then it should allow me to list my skills (which it does) and then I should approach my contacts for endorsement on those skills. I should be allowed to pick a skill and select a few contacts and ask them for endorsement. For example, I would pick “Customer Service” skill and approach some of my customers and ask them to endorse me on that skill.
Summary
Rather sweet and short post about one of my pet peeves against LinkedIn. If you know a way to take care of this issue, please do let me know. I will be eternally grateful to you :). Are there any other pet peeves of yours? I would love to know them. Please drop a comment.
