I clicked on a bunch of endorsements on LinkedIn for a guy I barely know and now I have some regrets about it, concerned that somehow he’s going to be perceived as more of an expert than he is because of my good reputation. Can I “unendorse” him?
LinkedIn has always been an interesting site because of the tension that you’re getting at with your question. On the one hand it’s a professional site for colleagues and peers to search, find, and recommend, but it’s also competing directly with Facebook and therefore is also somewhat of a social site. The problem is that social often equals shallow and by trying to be more engaging and participatory, LinkedIn has rather diluted the value of endorsements in the last few years.
There’s no better example than the one word “endorsements” themselves. 99+ of my colleagues (and friends? do we have “friends” on LinkedIn?) have endorsed me for “blogging”, but what does that mean and what benefit do I really see from it? I mean, sure, it’s fun and interesting to see what words people associate with my skillset, but is that really something that helps people land new business opportunities?
In any case, my initial reaction to your question was to say “don’t worry about it” and not demonstrate the steps needed, but you’re right that in some situations, you might be tops in your field and an endorsement, even as superficial an endorsement as clicking on a few words, is something that you might later have second thoughts about. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to unendorse someone…
First, though, here’s what we all keep seeing when we view other profiles, a set of keywords based on previous endorsements:
I’m looking at my friend Scott’s LinkedIn profile, but here I can only add additional endorsements, not remove any already selected.
To do that, I need to scroll down lower in his profile to find where the full set of endorsements are listed. It’ll look like this:
Notice that Scott’s got a lot of endorsements. Look more closely, thoug, and you’ll notice that the first three also have a blue “+” symbol after the skill and expertise word or phrase, while the fourth one, Entrepreneurship, doesn’t.Â
The ones with the blue plus are those I’ve endorsed him for, while I didn’t endorse him for entrepreneurship. Easy enough, once you know the subtle code.
To unendorse him for, say, social networking, all I have to do is move my cursor over the blue “+” symbol:
The button changes to a blue “-” and says “Remove Endorsement”.
Okay. Click on it. Now he no longer has my endorsement for social networking.
Move the cursor over the gray “+”, which it’s now become, and you can very easily add your own endorsement after all:
By using this simple technique, you should be able to go to this other person’s LinkedIn profile, scroll down to the “Skills & Expertise” section, and unendorse him from whatever you’d like. Better? He will get no specific notification that you’ve done that, so no awkward email after the fact either.
Hope that helps you get the most out of your LinkedIn profile and interaction!