Why I don't write linkedin recommendations
From time to time, I'm asked to write recommendations for people on LinkedIn.
I always say no.
My problem is that linkedIn recommendations are simply not credible like Amazon book recommendations. LinkedIn recommendations are always 100% positive!
Here's what you typically find:
Dan recommends Tom: "Tom is just the greatest, most amazing guy. Such a pleasure to work with, a true professional. Simply the best."
and of course,
Tom recommends Dan: "Dan is always right! Wink, wink. He's so smart and can solve any problem."
Sometimes it's funny to see mutual back-scratching recommendations like this side by side on someone's profile page, or even better: right after one-another in the news feed. As in, it took Tom about 30 seconds to reciprocate after Dan wrote his positive review.
LinkedIn recommendations are so universally positive that to find a negative one would make me think that the reviewer was a bitter, vindictive person, and certainly not a balanced, credible reviewer.
The truth is that a quality reference on any individual will involve more than just an 'x-star rating' or 50 word summary with lots of exclamation points. In my experience people have qualities which can be very positive or negative depending on surroundings, circumstance, colleagues, and other variables.
I'm more than happy to provide a reference for anyone I've worked with in the past, and promise to be as objective as possible in assessing that person's capabilities, character, experience, and growth during our collaboration. But I won't write fawning fanboy reviews on linkedin for people because I don't think it's helpful to anyone involved- it undermines the credibility of the reviewer, does a disservice to the reviewee, and wastes the time of the reader of the review.
2 comments
The system has to be seen the other way around. Recommendations are always positive because writing a negative recommendation could possibly badly hurt somebody which might have performed well in other circumstances. So a bad professional won't get any bad recommendations but he won't get any good ones either.
Like with any form of advertisement, it is the role of the consumer (in this case the hiring person) to detect when the message conveys some truth or is totally fake. It's like with any system that is based on trust, it can be abused but remains useful if you use it with the right filters. With linkedin recommendations, you have to know how to read between the lines. And the reciprocity can be easily verified.
People choose on which medium they want their recommendations. If they think Linkedin will serve them well and ask their manager to write there, why question this choice ? It's their responsibility.
However, a manager's responsibility is to be honest. That's why each recommendation I wrote for my team members was personalized and thoroughly thought over to be trustworthy and to stress what I believe were the person's best qualities.
My feeling is that a recommendation shouldn't be an advertisement. It shouldn't be trying to sell anything.
The problem is that because LinkedIn recommendations are completely public, of course they all turn into ads. Which is fine, and as you say, people are free to consume ads and judge what they like from them.
Maybe I should retitle my post, "why I will write a recommendation, but not an advertisement for any former colleague" :)
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