Endorsements and recommendations are they worth it? Does that make you the person you are?
Ever day that passes by i aim at doing less and less of the normal corporate business day in and day out tasks.My typical day lately has been writing a post, managing social media campaigns, automating some of my processes, chatting online with friends via IM, facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, sms and of course meeting with people. But i feel a bit weird because everyone is busy running around. Life was the same for me too a year back but since i have consciously made a decision to choose what i want to do i have time to now connect and meet people from all walks of life.
Yesterday accidentally I met with a colleague after ages. We both were super uber thrilled to see each other and she wanted to sit down and chat. We caught up with all the gossip and started discussing her job finding experience at the moment. Knowing my background she wanted to talk to me about the jobs she has applied and what she could do better to improve her online presence. While discussing how she could position herself she asked me about recommendations and the value around it. I had never given this much thought as I believe in making my judgments based on how a person positions themselves either offline or online through their own work. She said that the company hiring her had done their due diligence of rating her based on her presence online. The thought was a bit scary because this could make or break the possibility of securing the job. Especially if her LinkedIn profile was not up to the mark. I guess it the same for a standard C.V. Letters of recommendation have been around for a long term and the same standards hold true for LinkedIn but there is a fine line.
These are some of the barriers around online recommendations and profiles that we discussed :
As a person looking out for a job:
1. Do you really believe that you need people to constantly praise you?
2. Should you actually allow hiring companies to judge you based on what your colleagues and customers have said about you?
3. If you have a follower network which is not huge would you feel intimidated?
4. Do you honestly have the guts to keep a bad comment active on your profile?
5. How do you differentiate yourself from your competition should you go the online track?
6. Are you ready to commence the journey online to not be yourself due to the professional stigma attached to your life?
Well these are questions you need to ask yourself and come up with a plan of whether or not recommendations matter to you.
As a business looking to hire:
My Final Thoughts:
Our world is complicated don’t complicate this more by running after recommendations. As and when a person feels like giving you a recommendation accept it but don’t go asking. If you want to genuinely praise someone do it. This can be seen on social networks such as orkut, facebook and the smaller networks where the recommendations are not displayed because of a reason. As a company if you need a cross reference ask the candidate to provide you with one. At the end of the day just make life simple.
All the best and your thoughts would be appreciated.
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July 23rd, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Gone are the days when resumes used to be sent through post and interview calls expected from a postman.
Industry dynamics have changed (thanks to technology) since the years gone by and marketing oneself through online web portals (FB, LinkedIn, Twitter) has become a norm of the day. Recruiters all over make use of these resources as a basis for judging a candidate. So references can be of big help in judging a candidate.
Rightly said that this is not the right way to have a final conclusion, but I personally feel, the recos from a GOOD SOURCE give a good indication of what a candidate is all about. How else does a recruiter judge? Just viewing a CV is not enough.