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Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

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Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#51

Post by closed »

mendicantB wrote: post #42

Your analysis is extremely flawed. I really appreciate your sharing the data with us and I like your service. But, this is a poorly done and a far from subtle plug of your business at the cost of LinkedIn. 1) Technical ability vs # of endorsements Jesus. Hiding stats that you don't like through aggregations? And please read up on Simspons Paradox, which is clearly the case here just by looking at your plot. Try a bas…

Agreed. This post would be okay if there wasn't so much "we crunched the numbers" talk, and then very perplexing reporting.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#52

Post by komali2 »

rising-sky wrote: post #19
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`.

Endorsements for skills you HAVEN'T listed must be accepted, but if you have a skill listed, anybody can endorse it for you. I think that's what OP meant - he had Python on there because maybe he knew a bit about it, and a bunch of randos just clicked the + next to it.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#53

Post by minimaxir »

mendicantB wrote: post #42

Your analysis is extremely flawed. I really appreciate your sharing the data with us and I like your service. But, this is a poorly done and a far from subtle plug of your business at the cost of LinkedIn. 1) Technical ability vs # of endorsements Jesus. Hiding stats that you don't like through aggregations? And please read up on Simspons Paradox, which is clearly the case here just by looking at your plot. Try a bas…

> And please read up on Simspons Paradox, which is clearly the case here just by looking at your plot.

What is the instance of Simpson's paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox) in the scatterplot? There are skews on both X and Y axes, but I don't see disparate trends.

Would faceting by preferred language/experience/LinkedIn age show different trends in this context?

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#54

Post by amyjess »

nickbauman wrote: post #4

I've been endorsed for sarcasm on linked in. When friends want to tease, we endorse each other for things like ms-dos and j2ee it's beautiful.

When endorsements came out, some friends and I discovered that you could endorse people for violent crimes.

Yes, you too can endorse your connections for murder, kidnapping, and terrorism.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#55

Post by GlennS »

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 deleted mine a few years ago, after some idiot tried to recruit me over my work phone. No regrets whatsoever.

Recruiter spam dropped off. The couple of recruiters who were actually any good still send me an email and/or a call once a year to find out if I'm looking for anything. So I don't feel like I lost anything.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#56

Post by komali2 »

OliverJones wrote: post #11
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.

Opposite of my experience. LinkedIn gave me a massive scope over engineers, with better filters than any of the many other sites we were using.

What kind of recruiter waits for responses to their help ad?

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#57

Post by komali2 »

kevincennis wrote: post #44
austenallred wrote: post #27

Just as a test I added "laughter yoga" as one of my skills to my LinkedIn profile. So far it's received 5 endorsements. Proof: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austenallred/

At the time of this writing, I have been endorsed for the following skills: Fly-bagging (10) Squirrels (10) Walking (8) Fierce Conversations (9) Rhinoplasty (2) Puns (3)

Maybe your endorsers thought you meant Squirrel-lang? (files of which end in .nut)

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#58

Post by duderific »

xexers wrote: post #38

I wonder how valuable the written recommendations are? Anyone have data on that?

Yes, that is a much more interesting question. They should be much more valuable, since they represent much more effort than a simple button click. However, you don't really know how genuine a recommendation is. It could be simple payback for someone who gave you a recommendation or some other favor in the past.

You would need some kind of subjective survey on if any prospective employers/recruiters even look at the recommendations and how much weight they tend to give them.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#59

Post by TallGuyShort »

tyingq wrote: post #37
TallGuyShort wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI definitely encourages mindless tagging. I'm endorsed for parallel algorithms by the manager of a very low-end car maintenance shop. Plural of anecodate, yada yada yada, but most of my endorsements are from people who really have no experience in that programming language or concept AT ALL.

A manager of a low end car maintenance shop with whom you've done no work for, correct? If you have done work for him, I'd argue the tag at least means he liked the work. If not, then yeah, useless data.

I spoke with him for a few minutes at a wedding. Must have liked the conversation.

Re: Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements

#60

Post by latently »

A better way to do this analysis would have been to create an extremely sparse matrix with one column for every possible endorsement category with the value being the number of endorsements (normalized). Then try to predict various aspects of coding performance.

Definitely wouldn't endorse the author for machine learning :)

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