Rec­om­men­da­tions are a fan­tas­tic and mean­ing­ful way to round out and com­plete your LinkedIn pro­file. They can be very per­sua­sive when a poten­tial client, recruiter or hir­ing man­ager searches you, and if they are hon­est and well done they also serve as pos­i­tive feed­back from clients, col­leagues, man­agers and staff you know you can turn to for ref­er­ence requests, pro­file for­wards and help dis­sem­i­nat­ing your resume if you are a job seeker.

Fun Fact: You need three rec­om­men­da­tions to have a 100% com­plete profile.

When they are solicited favors from social net­work­ing friends you have never con­ducted busi­ness with, they are unde­served, unfounded props that cheapen the value of well earned, bonafide recommendations.

I have seen a lot of it going on lately and it’s unfor­tu­nate. I know some feel rules are meant to be bro­ken and guide­lines are just that.. but the mis­use of a poten­tially pow­er­ful tool like a pro­fes­sional rec­om­men­da­tion deserves seri­ous crit­i­cism in my book of ethics.

Let col­leagues, clients or sup­pli­ers speak to your record

I have had sev­eral requests for rec­om­men­da­tions I felt I just couldn’t pro­vide and then sleep well at night. In the case of my intern who just started and enthu­si­as­ti­cally fol­lowed my sug­ges­tion to cre­ate an account now in her sopho­more year, so she can build a vast, mean­ing­ful net­work of men­tors and sub­ject mat­ter experts to take her through the rest of col­lege and into a career, I sim­ply wrote back and said, “I would be happy to write a rec­om­men­da­tion for you once you com­plete your intern­ship — based on the qual­ity of your work.”

In the case of oth­ers who I have never worked or col­lab­o­rated for or with on any project… I gen­er­ally just ignore the requests. You see, I can’t rec­om­mend some­one because I have heard of them, lis­ten to them on an inter­net radio show, read their blog, or even know of good work they do. It would be like writ­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion for Ander­son Cooper — I think he does a great job but a rec­om­men­da­tion from me is mean­ing­less to his career..

What’s the point?

Search cur­rent and for­mer clients, col­leagues, man­agers, pro­fes­sors and col­lege class mates you did real work for and with, link up with them and ask for a real rec­om­men­da­tion. If you would like to know more about LinkedIn rec­om­men­da­tions here is a short video you’ll find help­ful. As always, I wel­come your commentary.

My inspi­ra­tion for this post goes to M.H. I woke up this morn­ing and over morn­ing cof­fee I checked my email. There was a LinkedIn invi­ta­tion from her. I haven’t worked with her or spo­ken with her in 15 months. It wasn’t a fan let­ter. It talked about projects, teams and and our pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship. It was truly very mean­ing­ful to me. What did I do? I wrote one back…