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How To Write a LinkedIn Recommendation

This article is more than 9 years old.

LinkedIn has a lot of great features, but overall the site suffers from a fairly mechanical feeling. There isn't a lot of human warmth on LinkedIn, notwithstanding the fact that LinkedIn has over 300 million users. That's why I draw colorful pictures with markers and colored pencils.  The more personality you can bring to your LinkedIn presence and your profile, in my book, the better!

One of the things LinkedIn lets you do is leave recommendations for friends and colleagues of yours, including vendors, ex-customers and anyone you want to recommend, as long as that person is a first-degree connection to you. I'm not talking about those goofy Skills endorsements. I hate those things. They're a nuisance.

The whole idea of getting votes for your Skills is ridiculous. People are more nuanced than that. That's why I'm glad there's a way to leave a more in-depth, human-voiced recommendation for a LinkedIn user you think highly of.

I've written gazillions of them, and I'm sure I'll write gazillions more. LinkedIn recommendations beat the heck out of old-fashioned letters of recommendation, because unlike a letter of recommendation your LinkedIn recommendation lives on forever (or until our sun burns out) online, right on your LinkedIn profile.

Someone who's checking out your profile can easily jump from a recommendation someone wrote for you right to the recommender's own profile, and see for him- or herself how credible that person is.

LinkedIn recommendations rule, and I hope you begin to write some of them if you haven't done that already. Here's how.

In order to leave a Recommendation for a LinkedIn user, you must be a first-degree connection of his or hers. You can leave a Recommendation on the profile of any of your first-degree connections. To start a new Recommendation, jump to your first-degree connection’s LinkedIn profile.

  • In the pull-down menu at the blue link labelled “Send a message.” The fourth item in the pull-down menu is Recommend. Click on that link.
  • You will be prompted to choose a category in which to recommend your first-degree connection. You’ll be prompted to write a recommendation for your friend, which LinkedIn will send to him or her for approval before listing your recommendation on your friend’s profile.

What sort of recommendation should I write?

LinkedIn recommendations are helpful for people who are reviewing LinkedIn profiles. They help the LinkedIn user who’s browsing profiles understand more about the person whose profile they’re viewing. Your words about your friends flesh out your friends’ profiles. Our friends can talk about us in ways that we can’t politely use to talk about ourselves.

The best LinkedIn recommendations are specific. They don’t use generalities like “Pam is a great person” or “Joe is a wonderful co-worker.” You can use words to bring your friend to life in your LinkedIn recommendation. If you tell a short story in your recommendation, the reader will get a little slice of the experience you had working with Pam or Joe. Here are examples of two LinkedIn recommendations you can use to start writing your own recommendations!

Sally and I worked together at Acme Explosives, where she was in Marketing and I was her liaison to the Sales team. Sally was a fount of information about the latest product releases, competitive stats and creative ways to turn customer conversations into selling opportunities. Sally is a talented, hard-working and warm co-worker and a joy to collaborate with. I miss her! 

Christof and I served on an engineering team to bring Prodigal Products’ high-speed internet solution to the Middle East market. Christof had tremendous ideas and was always supportive of our colleagues and customers, even when his own workload was overwhelming. In one case we were stuck in Dubai and had a client emergency in Australia, and Christof devoted a full day to solving the problem from the waiting area at an airport. He’s a top-notch engineer and a wise businessperson who’d made a tremendous addition to any product development team.

How do I collect my own LinkedIn recommendations?

You can ask your first-degree LinkedIn connections to write recommendations for you, but in my experience you’re better off writing LinkedIn recommendations for your friends (without waiting for them to ask you to!) and sending them.

Your friends will be touched and in most cases will write LinkedIn recommendations for you, also. When your friend receives the LinkedIn recommendation you’ve written for them, LinkedIn will prompt them to return the favor and write a recommendation for you.