Some recommendations about recommendations

Regarding recommendations on LinkedIn or anywhere else for that matter.

Who is/are the target audience that you want to see, and be impressed by, your recommendations?
What do you want people to say about you that sends the right messages to, creates the right images for, your target audience?
Who can best represent, and speak to, your various work, education, and other experiences?
Who, and from where, are the people who are most relevant to your target audience?

Once you have answered the questions above, contact the people you want to recommend you on LinkedIn (they have to be members of LinkedIn to give you a recommendation). Provide them with a recommendation you scripted for them and ask them to review, edit if they want to, and send to you to be posted on your LinkedIn profile.

Offer to do the same for them.

LinkedIn prompts and directs you about recommendations under your experience and education on your profile.

Any performance review or evaluation you received at your workplaces from your immediate supervisors can provide an excellent source of recommendations. If you do not have copies of performance reviews, contact the company and ask for a copy of your personnel records.

Remember that the most preferred recommendations come from previous supervisors and other work associates including customers who can testify to your work performance.

You can also provide evidence of your "soft skills" such as interpersonal, communication, organization, leadership and the like with recommendations from non-work contacts who have been witness to related behaviours. Also, fellow workers and other contacts of yours can speak to personal characteristics of yours such as trustworthiness, reliability, honesty and professionalism.

Recommendations are simply testimony provided by others to verify and support your claims about your different sets of skills, work performance and achievements.

Your skills, work, and achievements easily could fill a book, but without the right "recommendations" on the jacket, that book may never be bought.

For help with crafting your recommendations, feel free to contact me.

And follow me and JVS at www.jvsdet.org and check us out on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. Job postings are at www.ParnossahWorksDetroit.org as well as the calendar of upcoming seminars and events.

Walt
wtarrow@jvsdet.org