
Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements - leeny
http://blog.interviewing.io/linkedin-endorsements-are-dumb-heres-the-data/
======
mendicantB
Your analysis is extremely flawed.

I really appreciate your sharing the data with us and I like your service.
But, this is a poorly done and a far from subtle plug of your business at the
cost of LinkedIn.

1) Technical ability vs # of endorsements

Jesus. Hiding stats that you don't like through aggregations? And please read
up on Simspons Paradox, which is clearly the case here just by looking at your
plot. Try a basic t-test, or rather some statistical rigor, the next time you
try to make conclusions from data.

2) Most endorsed vs Language of Choice

As pointed out, this is not the way to frame your problem. By obfuscating
what's happening in your histogram (which isn't technically constructued right
either) you are again hiding what you dont like through aggregation. By the
way, language matters greatly here, and you'd have benefitted by
standardization.

3) Your conclusion

"After running some significance testing, though" and not posting your results
or methodology, which is at best questionable after reading your analysis.

Again, I enjoy your service, but blog posts on technical ability that are
ironically lacking in technical ability don't really make me want to come
back.

PS: A little birdie told me that endorsements are quite strong in predictive
power for jobs :)

~~~
fnl
Here's another, even worse example:

> It turns out that people’s interview language of choice matched their most
> endorsed language on LinkedIn just under 50% of the time, so, you know, just
> slightly worse than flipping a coin.

A coin has 2 sides. How many programming languages are there, again?

~~~
usgroup
language of choice == linkedin endorsed lang -> {TRUE,FALSE}

Yet if there was no relationship between the two entities and there were N
languages, one would expect the random probability of TRUE to be N/N^2 = 1/N.

Although, the writer doesn't seem to allege that he's comparing to random or
anything like that.

~~~
leeny
Yeah, that's exactly how I meant it. But I agree it's confusing. Will remove
the comparison right now.

------
United857
In their quest to copy Facebook's formula for professional networking, LI's
growth/engagement team makes a huge effort in promoting users to endorse their
connections.

As a result, nearly all the endorsements on my LI have come from non-technical
folks who just know buzzwords (e.g. python was my most-endorsed skill even
even though this isn't my most used language by far, and any engineer taking a
quick glance at my projects -- almost all native C/C++/ObjC -- would realize
it. Now I'm getting lots of pitches for python gigs...)

If there was a way to (optionally) approve an endorsement beforehand, that
would help.

~~~
rising-sky
Actually, LinkedIn endorsements have to be accepted by the endorsee before
appearing on their profile. This has always been the case, I know because I
haven't accepted endorsements for `Cascading Stylesheets`, but for `CSS`.

~~~
komali2
Endorsements for skills you HAVEN'T listed must be accepted, but if you have a
skill listed, anybody can endorse it for you. I think that's what OP meant -
he had Python on there because maybe he knew a bit about it, and a bunch of
randos just clicked the + next to it.

~~~
086421357909764
that's more on the fact that linkedIn asks "does x know y" rather than "here's
a list of skills, select which is more applicable".

I also agree though, people randomly endorse stuff. I see D.o.D. all the time
or Security Clearance. What does that even mean? That's not a skill as much
as, hey I worked there, or hey I have one.

------
ben1040
I've been considering just deleting my LI account. It essentially has just
been a sink for terrible recruiter mail; in 12 years of having an account I
don't think I've once received any sort of actionable message through it.

I've also turned off the endorsements because I was just getting driveby
endorsements for things like J2EE.

Is there a job-search downside to deleting your account, provided you have a
decent Google cross section otherwise via conference talks, blog, github, etc?

I can't tell if LinkedIn has marketed itself into an actual perception that
not having an account means you don't care about career or the like.

~~~
colinbartlett
I am personally astonished that LinkedIn is still a thing. For me, it was the
most obviously useless of all the social networks and it was the first one I
deleted, upwards of 7 years ago now.

The other social networks eventually followed but LinkedIn just gave me zero
value from day one. It was nothing but recruiter spam. Do people actually get
work and jobs out of LinkedIn? Or is is just a way to keep up with what old
coworkers are doing? I frankly do not get it.

~~~
user5994461
> Do people actually get work and jobs out of LinkedIn? Or is is just a way to
> keep up with what old coworkers are doing? I frankly do not get it.

Yes. Multiple times.

~~~
CaptSpify
As someone who has only gotten recruiter spam from LI: Was it worth sifting
through all the spam? I've personally never known anyone who has gotten a job
with them, so from where I sit it seems like a lot of work for no payoff. I'm
curious as to your experience, though.

~~~
snoman
Got a job at MS via LinkedIn, as well as my current job, which I really enjoy.

I ignore recruiters if I even get a hint that they're not employed directly by
the company they're purporting to be with. It's become less of an issue within
the last year or so.

------
deftnerd
Up until the LinkedIn redesign a few weeks ago, I used to run a bit of
javascript every day that would pick a 100 people randomly on my LinkedIn
"friends list" and endorse them for one of their listed skills that I hadn't
already endorsed them for.

Every time I did that, it caused about 20% of the people to view my profile,
which gamed my LinkedIn statistics so my profile was ranked higher in various
searches.

I haven't rewritten the script since their redesign, but I'll get to it soon.

~~~
jiaweihli
Wow, that's an ingenious hack that makes a lot of sense in hindsight. What was
your thought process and how did it lead to that? Was it solving a similar
problem in another domain?

~~~
anilgulecha
> Wow, that's an ingenious hack that makes a lot of sense in hindsight. What
> was your thought process and how did it lead to that? Was it solving a
> similar problem in another domain?

I've read your comment thrice and have not been able to understand it! It's
starts out mildly reasonable, then drifts out into bot-territory

~~~
jiaweihli
I'm mildly offended that you trivialized my comment. I'm even more confused
because I believe my questions are completely valid, and you're not taking
them at face value.

To rephrase:

Have you ever encountered a flash of insight that seemed to approach a
challenge from a completely different angle? It could be something like
someone solving a deeply technical problem in a non-technical way, or the
first time you were introduced to affordance [1].

This is similar. Instead of the obvious solution of injecting buzzwords into
his LinkedIn profile, deftnerd did a social hack that nudged his own
connections towards viewing his profile, equivalently boosting his visibility.

What I meant by my questions is that I'm interested in learning both the flash
of insight and the thought process that led to that. Sometimes the reason is
as bland as accumulated knowledge (but even then, what knowledge?). But if
not, maybe I can learn a completely new perspective from which to approach a
whole class of problems.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-
affordances/answe...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-
affordances/answer/Shaun-OConnell?srid=nEG0)

~~~
anilgulecha
Apologies -- I could have phrased it better. Your explanation above provides
clear context for your original question.

~~~
jiaweihli
A bit late, but apology accepted! =)

------
fecak
When writing LinkedIn profiles for my resume and coaching clients, I advise
them to turn endorsements "off". Under the Skills section is a "Adjust
Endorsement Settings" listing that you can click to turn it off.

Endorsements tend to be just extra noise with all those pictures, and on many
profiles there is rather important information (education, projects, etc.)
_below_ the skills section. You don't want your reader getting lost in the
endorsements before getting to some useful info.

~~~
kchoudhu
Serious question: what exactly does a resume coach do? Do they just maintain a
good resume for me?

~~~
handedness
BLUF: A good one will help your résumé navigate the often opaque and
misaligned fiefdom that is corporate HR.

Long version: If they have significant and current experience with hiring
processes (especially in your industry), they'll be able to help you with
everything from how to word and structure it to maximize your odds of getting
through the automated filters nearly every big company uses these days, to
figuring out (based on job postings) what the hiring company's HR department
is going to care about. Which is often different from what the person doing
the actual hiring will care about, but you need to satisfy both.

They also have visibility into other aspects (salary, titles, mobility) that
recruiters often can be helpful with, too, but I've found recruiters sometimes
have their incentives somewhat misaligned with those of their clients (e.g.,
like a real estate agent who makes more money if they focus on turnover over
deal size, so the homeowner isn't happy to get $15K less for their house than
they could, recruiters make their cut when someone gets hired for anything, at
any salary, and a small percentage of a salary that's 10% lower is less of a
concern to them than being 10% underpaid is to you), whereas a résumé
consultant's job is to do their part to ensure you get the interview.

I run a couple businesses and therefore don't really have a résumé myself, but
I've probably referred a total of a half people (friends, relatives, and
people moving on from my employ to better things) to a close friend who is a
résumé consultant, and they in turn have referred many multiples of that,
given how happy they were with the results. Virtually all got interviews with
the companies they wanted to. (Of course, a good résumé consultant will also
tell you when you're completely on-paper-unqualified to enter that job via
traditional means.)

I consider myself a fairly capable person, but seeing the work of a highly
talented résumé consultant made me realize that that's just not an area I (or
the vast majority of most people) are adept at navigating.

It's sort of like hiring an attorney to handle a legal matter one could
technically handle without being an attorney. Sure, if you already have a
talent for that kind of thing, and are willing to spend at least hundreds of
hours working in that field, you'd probably be able to take care of that one
task fairly easily, but anything short of that and it's far better to pay an
expert.

A few hundred bucks to put one's résumé into the top few-percent of
applications is money very well spent.

~~~
fecak
As my background is in recruiting (which is quite helpful in resume writing),
this is well put overall. A resume writers is just trying to position you as
best as possible to get in the door, whereas a recruiter typically is just
trying to get everyone in the door.

The thing I like about resume writing and coaching is that it's 100% focused
on helping an individual job seeker, and there are no misaligned incentives.

------
yellowbeard
Not sure linkedin really cares if the endorsements are accurate or not. I
heard endorsements were / are massively successful at re engaging users, which
is the real aim of the product.

~~~
jplasmeier
My experience has been that my friends and I troll each other by submitting
endorsements for irrelevant things like "Microsoft Office" or "Public
Speaking." I usually spend a few minutes on LinkedIn when this happens, so
this is consistent with your point.

~~~
bcrescimanno
After being contacted through LinkedIn for an entry level PHP job in Spain (I
don't use PHP nor do I speak Spanish and I have nearly 20 years of experience)
my colleagues decided to endorse me for both PHP and Spanish--so I can
absolutely relate. :)

------
austenallred
Just as a test I added "laughter yoga" as one of my skills to my LinkedIn
profile. So far it's received 5 endorsements.

Proof:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/austenallred/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/austenallred/)

~~~
kevincennis
At the time of this writing, I have been endorsed for the following skills:

Fly-bagging (10) Squirrels (10) Walking (8) Fierce Conversations (9)
Rhinoplasty (2) Puns (3)

~~~
komali2
Maybe your endorsers thought you meant Squirrel-lang? (files of which end in
.nut)

------
sebringj
I remember making several comments over the years about that on LinkedIn
asking why endorsements were relevant. Recruiters or IT companies looking for
favors would randomly give me credit for skills they had no idea I was capable
of or not. In the beginning I would message them back saying "You don't even
know me, why are you endorsing me?" and people would be surprised like it was
rude or something like they were doing me a favor with bullshit endorsements.

After that, I just cared only about getting recommendations from CEOs and CTOs
etc. on LinkedIn. These actually are useful and are a true marker of your
reputation. Endorsements need to be completely overhauled or abandoned. They
have the potential to be cool if somehow there were rep points that could be
distributed for the given skill set that people were actually qualified in to
give but that would be way too complicated for most people to even understand
or care about.

~~~
sfink
When the endorsement flood first hit, I thought it was a truly awful and
intrusive idea. I created an Unwanted Endorsement Recipient... skill? I don't
remember exactly how it works. I know I've been endorsed for it a few times
now, though I long ago turned off endorsement emails so I'm not sure.

It's just an engagement growth hack by LI. I understand why they did it, but I
think it's short term gain for long term risk of irrelevance (of LI itself;
endorsements are already irrelevant). Which, for a social network, is the
biggest existential threat.

~~~
sebringj
Totally. Your comment is particularly relevant to me as I'm building my own
social network and have to see blunders of others and avoid them like the
plague.

------
nickbauman
I've been endorsed for _sarcasm_ on linked in. When friends want to tease, we
endorse each other for things like _ms-dos_ and _j2ee_ it's beautiful.

~~~
wickedlogic
"Healing Touch" is another fun one.

~~~
nickbauman
Ima steal this one. Too good.

------
andy-x
I believe endorsements on LI are fake. I'm receiving endorsements for random
things from my former and current co-workers and I know for sure they never
sent any (either because I asked them or I know it's entirely outside their
expertise).

~~~
phyzome
Yes, I've seen this too. 4 people allegedly endorsed me for Clojure, and only
one of them, when asked, even knew what it was. None could recall having
clicked the button.

And I allegedly endorsed someone for "TeamCity" before I knew what it was!

Either they're faking the data or their UI design is negligent-to-malicious
levels of bad.

------
shimon
LinkedIn is highly focused on metrics of user engagement. Endorsements
motivate a lot of engagement by providing a low-effort way for users to
articulate generally positive information about each other. Although skill
endorsements could be shaped into something more rigorous and useful, that
conflicts with engagement/virality goals which call for easy ways to quickly
message dozens of contacts.

In other words, no kidding endorsements are useless. That isn't the point.

------
ocschwar
I have endorsements for "potato salad" and "teenage paranormal romance".

My potato salad is pretty good. My twilight fanfic, however, only deserves
endorsement because I have not yet written any.

------
kevinpet
I read these articles until I get to the first major methodological problem.
In this case, it is this claim:

"It turns out that people’s interview language of choice matched their most
endorsed language on LinkedIn just under 50% of the time, so, you know, just
slightly worse than flipping a coin."

That would only be true if there were only two programming languages.

~~~
leeny
We thought of that too and tried to see how often people were endorsed for
their language of choice vs. their most endorsed language. Keep reading? (You
can scroll down to where the gray histogram is.)

~~~
kevinwang
Sorry, I don't understand the histogram at all either.

------
grabcocque
Threatening to endorse a colleague for PHP was a popular way of trolling at a
recent workplace. Childish, but amusing.

~~~
Taylor_OD
Love it.

------
verelo
Without trying to blow my own horn too hard here, I've never really taken
these all that seriously and have strongly thought that people who have more
(serious) recommendations are often the most useless people.

Screenshot: [http://m.imgur.com/uyXXEPl](http://m.imgur.com/uyXXEPl)

Source:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjohnmcgrath/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjohnmcgrath/)
[my recommendations]

~~~
tenkabuto
Thank you for posting this. I love this idea! It could demonstrate one's
personality in an unexpected way.

~~~
verelo
You're welcome.

I want to say that is how it started, but honestly I think I was just annoyed
at people who had never worked closely with me endorsing me for "The Cloud",
so I intentionally added some stupid things in the hope they'd prove to me
once and for all they actually didn't know anything about me.

My profile has been like this for years now...one day when I actually want to
do something different, I look forward to it acting as an automatic filter
against the people I don't want to work with :)

------
ceekay
This post is as good as "new study finds cholesterol causes heart disease". We
know that LinkedIn endorsements are only as good as the person looking at
them. In the new UI, LinkedIn highlights endorsements from "people that are
highly skilled at this", which, in my observations so far, is fairly
reasonable. In my mind endorsements only matter when they come from people
that _I_ trust. I'll take _highly skilled at this_ with a grain of salt, but
that's a lot better than endorsements from random people. I don't know anyone
that hires engineers based on endorsements.

------
leovonl
My experience with endorsements tells they can be not only deceiving, but also
a trap.

There's this guy which I used to work with that was not very good in the job
and used to distract others at work very often, not being really productive
most of the time - but he was generally nice to everyone, so nobody really
disliked him.

He ended up leaving the company, and was hired by another company which we had
business with. After some time, his new employer called our boss to tell he
left, taking with him all the code of the project he was and starting a
company by himself with this code.

This may seem bad already, but it was not the end: a few years later, the guy
comes back asking me for recommendations on LinkedIn - when I checked his
profile, I found he got a lot of code from the first company as well - where
we used to work together - and put on his Github, with copyright headers
stating he was the author. In fact, he did that with code _I personally
wrote_.

Of course, I didn't endorse him - but if I go to his LinkedIn page today,
there are tons of recommendations by ex-colleagues, including recommendations
for things that he barely worked with.

And this is just one example. Most co-workers I have or had that were really
good in what they do have zero to a few recommendations, and usually in very
specific stuff that don't every start to cover their knowledge.

So, my advice is: if you use LinkedIn recommendations to anything serious, you
are doing something wrong.

------
dnautics
one of the linked to articles has the following excerpt:

"Most jobs are never available publicly, just like most worthwhile candidates
are not available publicly (see here). Information about the position travels
at approximately the speed of beer, sometimes lubricated by email."

How does interviewing.io plan to attack this problem? I recently have had a
lot of trouble getting placed - through one of interviewing.io's competitors
(still not employed), but am now somewhat cynical about the process.

------
wallace_f
FWIW I noticed many lower-level employees who did a lot of heavy lifting for
the company had skill sets and productivity that may or may not have been
correlated with ability to get linkedin recommendations or endorsements. I'd
even heard talk of management refusing a recommendation because: "is he
looking for another job? why is he asking me for that?"

If you look at the world through rational self-interest recommendations and
linkedin profiles should be viewed sceptically.

------
shultays
For anyone that wonders what the hell is the loading bar that is on top of the
page, it loads the data for graphs at the bottom of the page.

I was semi-worried that my computer will explode when it is loaded. It takes
so long and gives no visual feedback what it is loading. I would either put
that near graph or better just use a static image

------
msoad
LinkedIn is very useful to keep a list of past and current colleagues and
touch base with them in case you need to.

Instead of deleting my LinkedIn account to get rid of recruiter spam, I
deleted my entire history. My profile is just my name and my photo. That way I
can expand my network of colleagues without getting bombarded with spam.

I highly recommend doing this!

------
aeijdenberg
I'd always assumed the primary goal of LinkedIn endorsements is the same as
every other email I get from LinkedIn, to keep user engagement with the site -
and based on the number of colleagues I see accepting them, I'd say it's been
pretty successful at achieving that goal for LinkedIn.

~~~
abraae
LinkedIn makes loads of money from their recruiting products. They likely care
as much or more that you have a good profile that recruiters can search as
that you spend time on the site.

------
DopamineHigh
Yep, I've been asked by friends to endorse them. But they are in a different
industry and I have no proof whether or not they know the skills. Ethically, I
don't think this is right. But no one I know has looked at endorsements during
the hiring/interviewing process.

------
greggh
Wait, you mean my 1500+ endorsements, mostly by people I don't know, are
worthless?!
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregghoush/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregghoush/)

I am pretty sure I already knew this.

------
S_A_P
I have anecdotal evidence that endorsements are useless. I endorsed myself for
"Rocket Science", "Brain Surgery", "Smooth Jazz", and "Yacht Rock".

I've received several endorsements for each.

------
Humdeee
Their notifications are top notch too:

"You have 1 new notification!"

 _tap_

... "Do you know these people?"

------
orthecreedence
Shouldn't we start with the assumption that LinkedIn endorsements are already
worthless and then try to prove that they have some sort of value? Hint: you
can't.

------
Ntrails
Here's my anecdata on LinkedIn Endorsements. I've got endorsements for
Malbolge a language I put on as a joke that I only know about vaguely from a
wikipedia article.

Turns out when they released them and every time people logged in they got
prompted to "endorse", they just pressed all of the buttons (and expected
reciprocation) whether or not they knew the first thing about the skill they
were endorsing that I had...

------
BrandoElFollito
What is the theory which states that the relationship is the cover graph is
linear? There must be one otherwise the fit does not make sense, it could have
been ax^3 + e^9x, or heart shaped.

There should be a law punishing arbitrary linear fits and ridiculous claims
which are concluded from their correlation.

------
throwaway7658
I wouldnt start my marketing spiel with "get a job at uber" unless I was going
to follow it with "... and bring your wiiiifeeee"

------
pbnjay
There's a hand-wavy footnote about recruiters not being able to divide by
number of connections for every search result candidate, but I still think
this would be a much more meaningful metric. I'm willing to bet the good
recruiters already look at number of connections (too many/too few being
flags), so I don't think it would be much of a stretch to compare the ratio.

------
latently
A better way to do this analysis would have been to create an extremely sparse
matrix with one column for every possible endorsement category with the value
being the number of endorsements (normalized). Then try to predict various
_aspects_ of coding performance.

Definitely wouldn't endorse the author for machine learning :)

------
minimaxir
Out of curiosity, why are the data manipulation controls (zoom/share) on the
plot.ly charts explicitly disabled (specifically, no hover popovers which
plot.ly sets by default + the parameters link=false and modebar=false)?

At that point, why not use static images for data visualizations instead?

~~~
Namrog84
Probably bad copy paste examples?

Or

Some people think everyone should consume charts a specific way and thus
disable everything that doesn't fit that precise consumption model.

------
tyingq
I wonder if they are useful at all just as: number of endorsements / number of
connections.

Even if the tag is wrong, that someone vouched for you in some minor way might
be statistically significant.

Of course, it could be that the UI encourages mindless tagging, therefore it's
all cruft.

~~~
TallGuyShort
The UI definitely encourages mindless tagging. I'm endorsed for parallel
algorithms by the manager of a very low-end car maintenance shop. Plural of
anecodate, yada yada yada, but most of my endorsements are from people who
really have no experience in that programming language or concept AT ALL.

~~~
tyingq
A manager of a low end car maintenance shop with whom you've done no work for,
correct?

If you have done work for him, I'd argue the tag at least means he liked the
work. If not, then yeah, useless data.

~~~
TallGuyShort
I spoke with him for a few minutes at a wedding. Must have liked the
conversation.

------
OliverJones
Yeah, the endorsement stuff is just tag spam.

They encourage people to endorse their friends, and they give us some tags.
Lots of people will, on the theory they're somehow helping their friends, do
this thing.

But the tags they offer have a tenuous relationship with reality.

------
nottorp
I don't need an article full of statistics to tell me the endorsements are
useless; everyone I know who has endorsed me only did it in the hope that that
box with 'endorse your friends' will disappear off their Linkedin.

------
charles-salvia
I'd like some endorsements for Hypercard, Police Quest 3, and obscure x86
opcodes

~~~
gydfi
I fucking rule at HyperCard.

------
tn13
Depends on what that data means. Endorsement does not mean X knows Java. I
would take it as X is somehow related to Java.

This is very useful and a collective statistics while being completely useless
for individuals.

------
Havoc
My employer set up a similar app thing - also allowing endorsements. Crucially
it allowed freeform endorsements.

Didn't take long for people to endorse each other's BASE jumping and pole
dancing ability.

------
s1gs3gv
Good article. So true about LinkedIn. In my experience, its a circle-jerk with
no real checks and balances.. Don't let the LinkedIn darlings here ruin your
day.

------
voycey
Haha I have always thought this though, I love that Tammy the waitress who I
knew from school endorsed that I am capable of Network Architecture and
Geospatial databases....

------
endswapper
Looking for input from LinkedIn users:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13738855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13738855)

------
chx
Well, after a certain event last year, I have added "The cyber" to my skills
and got endorsed for it. I do not need to be told they are useless.

------
xexers
I wonder how valuable the written recommendations are? Anyone have data on
that?

~~~
duderific
Yes, that is a much more interesting question. They _should_ be much more
valuable, since they represent much more effort than a simple button click.
However, you don't really know how genuine a recommendation is. It could be
simple payback for someone who gave you a recommendation or some other favor
in the past.

You would need some kind of subjective survey on if any prospective
employers/recruiters even look at the recommendations and how much weight they
tend to give them.

------
nsxwolf
I love when I receive an endorsement for something like "XML".

~~~
charles-salvia
At least it's not an endorsement for SGML

------
bsou
I'd like to see the residuals from that model

------
partycoder
If people claim: "I know C++"... then I rub my hands and the fun begins. It
usually ends with leaving that one off the list.

------
aarongeisler
Amen

