As a recruiter, you have noticed the endorsement sections that can be found at the bottom of profiles. Endorsements get a hard time from most recruitment companies I speak too. I agree they could have been implemented in a more strategic and relevant fashion. Though as we do in recruitment, we tend to have an attitude of “making things happen”, a “can do attitude”, let’s look at how we can turn these into an advantage for us.

The section allows people to review a candidate’s skill set and endorse that they believe this individual has the skills that are listed. These LinkedIn endorsements can then be used to boost the marketability of the individual. I’ve compiled a collection of advantages this can have for the recruiter.

Advantage # 1: Endorsements Can Spark Communication

I feel that perhaps the biggest advantage that the LinkedIn endorsements can provide will be an open forum to communicate with candidates. When you are reviewing a candidates profile, pay close attention to the skills that are endorsed and incorporate them into the position that you are approaching the individual for. An awesome way to engage with passive candidates without the dreaded cold call.

Advantage # 2 : Improve the Marketability of Your Candidate

When prospective employers review the LinkedIn endorsements, they can help to sell a candidate and spark interest. Obviously, if the skillset appears hand tailored to a particular position and you are the only person to endorse them, it won’t be as effective.

Instead, have the candidate complete the section with related works to their experience and watch as they are endorsed by their connections. For example, if an employee has previous experience in online SEO, some skills to add would be SEO, blogging, copywriting and similar items.

Advantage # 3: Boost the Visibility of a Candidate

Depending on the skills you are looking for, there could be hundreds of people who share a similar endorsement. Individuals who have higher endorsements for particular skills you need to have met for a position are going to appear at the top of the search results. I believe this will help to simplify the search you will have when trying to match candidates to the open positions you are filling. LinkedIn is getting more savvy to recruiter requirements. It’s up to us to use the tools at hand strategically.

Advantage # 4: Can Help You to Weed Out Problematic Individuals

I feel it is important to touch on the fact that with any powerful tool, there is going to be a degree of abuse. This can become apparent when you are looking at the results of the LinkedIn endorsements a person has.

I would recommend ignoring candidates who have clearly skewed their results by having friends simply endorse them for skills they most likely don’t possess. For example, if you have a 19 year old bank teller that has 500 endorsements for having advanced C++ coding, it is very unlikely there is any truth behind those endorsements.

Advantage 5 : You Can Help to Guide Candidates Better

Since the LinkedIn endorsements are new, many people are simply listing skills that will never have bearing on their career. As a recruiter, I believe you can work closely with candidates and browse their endorsements and help them to weed out useless skills that may be holding them back. This can build a degree of trust and have these individuals become more receptive to your advice that can have them placed in a great position.

According to LinkedIn more than 380,000 people have the position of recruiter as their current job title. If you want to stand out from this crowd, then I would recommend you consider using the endorsements skills of prospective employees to your advantage. Not only will you boost their marketability, but guiding them can help you to establish a degree of trust.

As an addendum, we at Digital2Recuit have been asked to speak internationally on LinkedIn and have now assigned a resource to pull together the best of the LinkedIn tools and strategies into one area for you, the savvy, goal driven recruiter to utilise. Watch this space.

As part of this process we are looking for the top recruiters on LinkedIn. Whether your skill be using Linked for:__________ Group as pipelines, passive candidate sourcing, client attainment, I’d love to hear from you. Send me a message on LinkedIn or @andy@digital2recruit.com with subject: LinkedIn Recruiter we will get onto a call to see if and how we share your experiences globally.