Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

blog.interviewing.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 156 posts

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#11

Post by OliverJones »

ben1040 wrote: post #8

I've been considering just deleting my LI account. It essentially has just been a sink for terrible recruiter mail; in 12 years of having an account I don't think I've once received any sort of actionable message through it. I've also turned off the endorsements because I was just getting driveby endorsements for things like J2EE. Is there a job-search downside to deleting your account, provided you have a decent Goo…

I've tried to use LI as a recruiting tool (as a hiring manager and as a team member of the person being hired). I've even paid for an upgraded subscription once in a while.

Worthless. Craigs List is cheaper and far more effective, with a well-written help wanted ad.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#13

Post by uladzislau »

ben1040 wrote: post #8

I've been considering just deleting my LI account. It essentially has just been a sink for terrible recruiter mail; in 12 years of having an account I don't think I've once received any sort of actionable message through it. I've also turned off the endorsements because I was just getting driveby endorsements for things like J2EE. Is there a job-search downside to deleting your account, provided you have a decent Goo…

Not having a LinkedIn account would be definitely a red flag for many companies. However you have the control to display as much information as you're comfortable with on your profile.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#14

Post by pbnjay »

There's a hand-wavy footnote about recruiters not being able to divide by number of connections for every search result candidate, but I still think this would be a much more meaningful metric. I'm willing to bet the good recruiters already look at number of connections (too many/too few being flags), so I don't think it would be much of a stretch to compare the ratio.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#15

Post by sebringj »

I remember making several comments over the years about that on LinkedIn asking why endorsements were relevant. Recruiters or IT companies looking for favors would randomly give me credit for skills they had no idea I was capable of or not. In the beginning I would message them back saying "You don't even know me, why are you endorsing me?" and people would be surprised like it was rude or something like they were doing me a favor with bullshit endorsements.

After that, I just cared only about getting recommendations from CEOs and CTOs etc. on LinkedIn. These actually are useful and are a true marker of your reputation. Endorsements need to be completely overhauled or abandoned. They have the potential to be cool if somehow there were rep points that could be distributed for the given skill set that people were actually qualified in to give but that would be way too complicated for most people to even understand or care about.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#17

Post by jplasmeier »

yellowbeard wrote: post #10

Not sure linkedin really cares if the endorsements are accurate or not. I heard endorsements were / are massively successful at re engaging users, which is the real aim of the product.

My experience has been that my friends and I troll each other by submitting endorsements for irrelevant things like "Microsoft Office" or "Public Speaking." I usually spend a few minutes on LinkedIn when this happens, so this is consistent with your point.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#18

Post by kevinpet »

I read these articles until I get to the first major methodological problem. In this case, it is this claim:

"It turns out that people’s interview language of choice matched their most endorsed language on LinkedIn just under 50% of the time, so, you know, just slightly worse than flipping a coin."

That would only be true if there were only two programming languages.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#19

Post by rising-sky »

United857 wrote: post #2

In their quest to copy Facebook's formula for professional networking, LI's growth/engagement team makes a huge effort in promoting users to endorse their connections. As a result, nearly all the endorsements on my LI have come from non-technical folks who just know buzzwords (e.g. python was my most-endorsed skill even even though this isn't my most used language by far, and any engineer taking a quick glance at my…

Actually, LinkedIn endorsements have to be accepted by the endorsee before appearing on their profile. This has always been the case, I know because I haven't accepted endorsements for `Cascading Stylesheets`, but for `CSS`.
Post reply on HN