A short guide on Linkedin Recommendations

Linkedin recommendations are a powerful tool to fall in the eyes of the target recruiter. With this post I plan to share some basic tips to extract the maximum from this tool.

Linkedin recommendations can be seen on the profile page of every Linkedin member. Till now if nobody has given you a recommendation via Linkedin, visitors to your profile would not see the "Recommendations" section.

Recommendation is one of the important stages of recruitment process. Most companies ask you to provide contact details about 1-2 colleagues/seniors from your previous organization to check your reputation and quality of work you did before hiring. It is assumed that the colleagues' of whom you provide contacts praise you like Kings or Queens because those are the best people you know if that organization.

So why not integrate this crucial aspect of hiring on your linkedin profile. On Linkedin there is no limit to number of recommendations you can obtain from your teachers, colleagues and classmates. The most important question boils down to:

"Is it the number of recommendations that matter or the position of the recommender?"

I would say that the number of recommendations on your profile definitely catch the eye of the recruiter but would not assure results. Every recommendation which you receive should uncover a different trait or characteristic of you. It should be from a diverse set of colleagues and classmates at different levels. It is no point receiving 4-5 recommendations from your friends in your class or colleague as a same level. That would surely make it look fake.

As you know that I love explaining things with an example, I would do the same for recommendations.

Lets consider that I am a graduate from ABC University. I have worked with 2 companies named DEF and GHI in a management consulting role. Assuming my tenure has been 1 year in the first company and 2 years in the second, I would aim as having the following recommendations on my profile. Of course if my colleagues, classmates are teachers are ready to recommend me :)

• 2 Recommendations from my best teachers in my university.


• 2 Recommendations from my classmates/friends


• 1 Recommendation from my Manager at DEF


• 1 Recommendation from my team mate at DEF


• 1 Recommendation from my Manager at GHI


• 2 Recommendations from my Supervisors at GHI (Assuming that I have at least 2 supervisors and 1 Manager at GHI)


• 2 Recommendation from my juniors at GHI (Assuming that I manage at least 2 people)

Above is just an rough estimate on how one should balance the recommendations on the Linkedin profile. It may vary from job to job and company to company. Hence use the above data for reference purposes only and feel free to run your own brain horses. Of course you should try that most of the recommendations highlight some different area of your work or personality.