Endorse This !!

August 21, 2013 — endorsements, LinkedIn

The era of click to endorse has only just begun. The competition for likes, comments, retweets and tagging is intense and will only become more brutal.  LinkedIn has become very brazen in promoting endorsement clicks as a means to engage.  Along with inviting 14 year olds to join, they have started to promote connection in a new creepy way.  People you may know flashes before your eyes as you check LinkedIn for any reason.  I have found new connections from whom I received no invitation, and I am sure I did not invite.  I had basically left my profile there alone for months, only to return and find myself endorsed by people I have never met.  The reason I had not been involved for a while was an aversion to this spammy, very bogus kind of alleged professional conduct.

I have joked extensively about this with others and have noticed other bloggers taking up the subject.  I have decided to do something about the endorsement situation from my own point of view. First, let me say that if you don’t know me and want to give me endorsement clicks on LinkedIn please continue to feel free to do so.  The space for written endorsements is still available for the purpose of praising real life shared professional experiences.  I intend to use it to create video endorsements of people I actually want to endorse.  They will praise people I know and with whom I have had some experience that has been positive.  I hope this revolution in candor will raise awareness about all those people who crave endorsement, but who lack the understanding or the skills to acquire it in real life.  We need to show them compassion without enabling them.