Today on LinkedIn I received a couple shining recommendations! The problem…..I have never met the people that recommended me, and I really don’t have any expertise in the areas in which they claimed I was an expert. I suspect they offered this professional olive branch in the hope I might reciprocate, and offer phony recommendations for people I don’t know.
And so goes the web…… largely a made-up world of fake news, fictitious people, and faux facts.
Now that’s not to say I am anti-LinkedIn. I think as a networking site it has a lot of interesting things going for it. And I suspect that at least half of the information you read on it is at least partially true. So how does that calculation work? 1/2 times 1/3rd? Carry the zero. Anyway…
I did discover something really fun you can do if you are interested in writing recommendations. As I learned LinkedIn does not monitor whether or not your recommendations have any basis in reality, so I recommended a few of my contacts for the skills “I hoped they would someday possess”. And note – these are all real categories available from LinkedIn’s database. Try it out:
I endorsed my friend, an attorney, for his skills in:
- Geriatric Psychiatry
- Reptiles
- SketchUp (not sure what this is, but it sounded interesting)
- Derivatives
I recommended the woman who I do not know, but chose to recommend me, for the following talents:
- Nostro Reconcilliation (again I am drawing a blank on what this might be)
- Liquid Penetrant Testing (sounds scientific and strangely dirty)
- Dog Grooming
- Zumba
If you really don’t like someone, LinkedIn even offers quite a few nefarious categories, including:
- Sex Discrimination
- False Advertising
- Impotence (Ow – don’t really want this one on my resume)