Slashdot Mirror
LinkedIn Promises To Bring Order and Meaning To Your Useless Endorsements (qz.com)
Oliver Staley, reporting for Quartz: LinkedIn's endorsement feature has never felt like the most trustworthy of sources. Rather than a panel of star witnesses who can honestly vouch for you, it more often seems like a random assortment of friends, acquaintances, and opportunists hoping for an endorsement in return. LinkedIn has recognized the problem and is trying to address it by creating a hierarchy of endorsers. Instead of all your endorsements having equal weight, the site will highlight people who might actually have some claim on knowing you, such as former colleagues and classmates, or who have credibility in the field. The goal is to make the feature more like the real world, where you ask for recommendations from people you trust or are in a position to know, says Hari Srinivasan, head of the LinkedIn team developing the feature. "If you want to find a good designer, you ask other good designers," he said.
With Microsoft using Windows 10 to harvest data from my PC (emails, web browsing, etc), and Microsoft owning LinkedIn's data ... well, I've already have started to drastically reduce what I have on LinkedIn.
I endorse that!
Wtf?
I maintain and account for my professional contacts but has anyone here ever actually used LI while on a job hunt or for networking with others that actually lead to something useful? I only visit about one every couple of weeks and I'm just wondering if there is value in the site that I'm unaware of. I can't imagine people actually using it to advance their careers for the company they're in but I may just be missing something.
to have people I don't know endorse me for things I don't know
I'm not sure there is any order or meaning on LinkedIn. It's just like Facebook but with more blatant self-aggrandizing.
A few years ago, I got a network request from the college-bound daughter of a client of mine. I thought, "Oh that's nice. She's starting early to build her professional network." So I clicked the acknowledgement. I then got a message stating something like, "Great! We'll notify her that you are interested in joining her network!"
I don't know if that was the exact wording, but the message made think there was an AI at work trying to make connections on behalf of the girl, and that because I responded, it would send my request to her out of nowhere. So she's 18 and I'm 40, and now I look like some kind of creepy stalker.
I haven't used LinkedIn since that day. It's just as well. I see little value in the site. To me, it's just a tool for head-hunting companies to spam me with requests to hire me or help the recruiter find someone who has my skill set and qualifications. Yeah, I'll get right on that.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Not really. I'm a clinical pharmacist in a hospital and I was talking to some people in my department a little while ago about social networking, which brought up LinkedIn. Only 4 people had an account and only one checked it with any regularity. Plenty, including myself, had an account at one but deleted it. Our department has ~ 40 people.
As Linked in seems mostly to be a spamming site of useless contacts. They would lose a lot of the so called "value" if they stopped the stupid spamming and only linked people to actual people they interact with as people could see how empty things are in reality.
I always loved Endorsement Roulette on LinkedIn. I only log in every month or so (if I'm not actively pursuing something) and nothing beats seeing that real estate agent you never actually hired endorsing me for Python Development and CPU Design. I'm reasonably certain I never discussed either of these with that dude, because at the time I wasn't heavily into Python... and Intel keeps telling me that nobody needs a CPU made out of reconstituted coffee grounds.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
I know many IT Recruiters who use it, and have been solicited by a few good IT recruiters that way along with a LOT of not so good. I think IT is its primary use.
The vast majority of my 800+ contacts are IT recruiters that I've talked to and/or interviewed with in my 20+ year career.
Need a Slashdot moderation type system for Linked In.
Bob from accounting, +1 Insightful
Julie from Veridian Dynamics, -1 floozie
Greg from Acme weapons, -1 racist
Darn, I've run out of moderation points to mod Sally.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
JOIN me (on LinkedIn), and I will COMPLETE your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict, and bring ORDER and MEANING To your USELESS ENDORSEMENTS!
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
In Soviet Russia, useless LinkedIn endorses YOU!
The entire service is a fucking cattle market. Unless you're desperate for a job and cannot possibly find it some other way (e.g. Monster or direct to a firm), it serves no purpose.
I have a good friend who is a manager at Google. Several times he has contacted me because he noticed that someone Google was considering hiring was in my LinkedIn network, and he wanted my recommendation. I usually give good recommendations, but in one case he later told me my input led to a candidate being rejected.
I was about to say the same thing it appear that technical fields are more common... I've been solicited multiple times as well, I think they like that my work history is a short list of long term employment.
Linked in endorsements are a big joke. At first I had people endorsing me even though I had never worked with them but it was ok because they were endorsing me for things like customer service or being a good presenter. Despite not having worked with these people directly, i'm pretty sure could easily explain to, i.e.: a head hunter, why I'm good at customer service or I'm a good presenter (in other words, it would be easy enough for them to make up a story). but quickly enough some people started to endorse me for things they have no idea about. I'm not saying I don't have the skills.. The problem is, there's i.e.: Bob who works at Walmart as someone who packs shelves and he endorsed me for Vmware. How do you imagine the conversation would go if a head hunter ever followed-up with Bob and asked him within which context he's experienced my vmware skills? Or exactly what are my Vmware strengths are?
People think they're doing you a favor by endorsing you for skills you listed on your profile but one look at the profile of whoever's endorsing you and usually it's pretty easy to tell if the endorsement should be taken seriously or not.
People seem to endorse me for things and they have no background in it. If you are going to endorse me for a skill, you should have that skill set in your linkedin profile. Your endorsement becomes more valuable when the people who endorse you also rise in the esteem of others. Ultimately, there needs to be a metric on skills by some unaffiliated power or weighting system.. (preferably, not stuff like certification training)
I had one person connect with me. They were generic enough I though I may have worked with them so I added them. They then use my link to a high profile person I know to contact them. That person got back to me to check what I knew about him. Having a closer look at his profile I realised it had no verifiable information. For example there was not a single employer named, just names such as "Radio Module company". He claims to hold a degree at the "University of Reading" but when I contacted that university they refused to confirm if he held a qualification from them for "confidentiality reasons". Truly bizarre. So if you want a fake degree don't buy one online, claim to have one from the University of Reading, for free.
So while I can't prove it, hence no link here, I strongly suspect that it is a fake profile. What was really fascinating was the sheer number of people who have endorsed him but probably don't actually know him. It made me realise the endorsement process was meaningless so I guess Linkedin's changes in this area are well overdue. Now if they could do something about fake profiles that would be good.
Now my contacts will begin to question the heart surgery endorsement from my cousin's babysitter's neighbor.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I have written 100% truthful, positive recommendations for some really good people. And some of those people have written 100% truthful, positive recommendations for me. But in the competitive marketplace, the value of this information is lost as truthful stories are diluted into an ocean of fiction.
The only thing LinkedIn is good for is entertainment. It's fun to visit the profile of known underachievers, just to see who is writing "quid pro quo" recommendations. I have seen stories about accomplishments that never happened, touting various achievements for projects that were spectacular failures.
And all of this is on top of imaginary degrees, fictional job titles at imaginary companies, or sometimes inflated job titles at real companies. Fact-checking this stuff is tougher than it looks. Most employers have a strict "no comment" policy regarding ex-employees. And then there are all the companies (and even colleges) that no longer exist. Even if a person can produce a reference to vouch for their story, it may turn out to be a case of one liar validating another. Background checks are definitely not working. I know of some people with fictional LinkedIn profiles, and somehow they bounce from one employer to the next with impunity.
I friend my more productive direct reports. Then I can get a heads up thats its time to give them a COLA when I see them updating their 7 year old resume.
.. it was going to be called "Circle-Jerk", but the domain was taken.
I was cold contacted by a recruiter at one of big tech companies for an interview which could have potentially lead to a nice position. I wasn't really that interested but I went ahead with the interview process out of curiosity. The offer was shrouded in mystery due to the nature of developmental work and it turns out it wasn't a good fit but it was fairly close.
When will they bring order to the chaos of jackwagons who don't respect the "does not want to be contacted about jobs" setting or the constant goddamned nagging to add crap.
LinkedIn is basically an endorsement for endorsement system. People don't like to say negative things about others when it's fully visible so very few people tend to do it. A hierarchical structure is not going to address this issue and its still just going to be a bunch of useless recommendations.