You know that blue box that often appears at the top of the page on LinkedIn? The one that asks if a connection has certain “skills and expertise”? And you click on “endorse” because you want to be nice or would like to get an endorsement in return?
You might want to think twice.
LinkedIn has an algorithm that generates these skills and they may not match the skills the person has or wishes to include on their professional profile. The skill you see might be a re-wording of a skill they’ve already listed, or not even be a skill they actually have. It also means that they’re getting fewer endorsements for the skills they really want to highlight.
A better idea would be to go to their profile and scroll down to their “Skills & Expertise” section and looks for the skills that you want to endorse. If there’s a blue plus sign (+) next to the skill, it means you’ve already endorsed them for it, clicking on it will remove that endorsement. If the plus sign is grayed out, you can click on it to endorse them for that skill.
If you really want to support your LinkedIn connections, endorse them for skills that you know they have and that they wish to be endorsed for.
I don’t even endorse people for skills that I am not personally aware of, yet I see people blanket endorse my skills and I *know* they have no personal knowledge of some of the skills they endorse for me. Very strange.
I think it’s because LinkedIn makes it so easy, in my opinion it rather renders the endorsements useless.