Many people have difficulties with asking for and giving recommendations on LinkedIn.

Potential clients, referral partners and employers pay attention to the recommendations you have received and ones you’ve given. Yet, many people remain reluctant to ask for public recognition for the work they do. Further, they struggle with how to compose a recommendation that comes across as authentic, specific and meaningful.

 

Asking For Recommendations

For someone to recommend you on LinkedIn, the two of you need to be connected on this site. Also, they can only recommend you for a position that’s listed in your Experience section. Therefore, if you have a leadership role in a volunteer organization, add that role to this section. In addition, doing so gives great PR to the organization.

Here’s some tips for requesting recommendations:

  • Typically, you should request recommendations for your current position and relatively recently positions. Set a goal of at least two or three recommendations per position.
  • Determine which of your LinkedIn connections will do the best job of writing a recommendation for you.  For example, you might want to review recommendations they’ve already written for others. Find these by going to the recommendations section of their profile and click on “Given.”
  • Once you select these people you want to recommend you, go to their profiles and click on the More button. Scroll down to “Request a Recommendation” and complete the template.
  • In the space where it says “Include a personalized message,” give them a couple of ideas of what to say.
  • Doing this both jogs their memory and ensures that you receive recommendations for the areas you most want to highlight.
  • Click send and wait for the accolades to come rolling in.

After you’ve requested the recommendation, write the person an email, alerting them of this request. Tell them the recommendation request can be found in their LinkedIn messages. Many people aren’t on LinkedIn very often, so that’s why sending this email is important.

 

Giving Recommendations

As I said before, for you to write a recommendation via LinkedIn, the two of you must be connected on this site. Also, only write recommendations where you can genuinely provide specific observations about the person and their role.

Here’s some tips for giving recommendations:

  • Think of someone you would like to recommend. It could be a client, referral partner, colleague, or a member of a group you are in.
  • Review the position description for the role in the person’s Experience section for which you’re writing the recommendation. There could be some verbiage in that description you can incorporate into your recommendation.
  • You may also want to review their profile headline and About section to get more ideas for describing them.
  • Be genuine and specific in the words you use for the recommendation. Use language that’s easy to understand and not too technical.
  • Avoid overthinking the process of writing a recommendation. Typically, just a few sentences are plenty.
  • If the person didn’t ask for the recommendation, alert them via an email that you just created it. Tell them to look in their LinkedIn messages to find your recommendation.
  • Be open to feedback from them about the recommendation. LinkedIn provides an option to the person getting a recommendation to ask for a revision. If the person does this for your recommendation and doesn’t tell you what needs revising, ask them. Make the suggested changes if they make sense to you, and send the updated recommendation.

 

About Joyce

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those ages 55 and older, to become more comfortable using social media, particularly Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

She works with business owners, business development professionals, leaders of nonprofit organizations, job seekers, consultants, and many others. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com