Do you enjoy having your skills endorsed by your LinkedIn connections?

I love it.  First thing in the morning, I’m on LinkedIn. Finding an endorsement for allegedly being able to do anything makes my day.

Without regular endorsements, I would be forced to go into the manager’s office and stab myself in the neck with a letter opener as I handed her that week’s time sheet.

Not something anyone wants to see happen. But at least I’d still get paid. And I may even get sick leave for it.

So, yeah, I rely on endorsements, within reason. How else are you supposed to know you’re good at something if strangers and casual acquaintances don’t tell you so?

As un-stabby as an endorsement makes me feel, I now have second-thoughts about their value, professionally speaking.

Endorsements are inherently qualified. In my experience, the only people who endorse you are the ones that know you well enough to be overcome with pathos and charity. Endorsing should have been one of the beatitudes. Blessed are they that endorse on LinkedIn, for they who love to be endorsed are some sorry-ass motherfuckers. 

So, maybe it’s your buddy endorsing you. Or maybe someone wants to be endorsed in return.

But what exactly are we endorsing?

Last week, I wanted to endorse my buddy so that they would endorse me in return so I wouldn’t have to stab my neck for the fifth time that week.

The way LinkedIn works, it asks you a question. So for my friend, it was “Does ___________ know about Newspapers?”

Well, I should fucking hope so. Newspapers have only been around for like more than two centuries. Who doesn’t know about newspapers? You’d have to have been freeze-dried in an avalanche 22,000 years ago in present day Switzerland to not know about a fucking newspaper. My 10th grade English teacher spent half a class period teaching us how to properly fold the New York Times for when reading on the subway. And they say public schools are going down the toilet.

LinkedIn sometimes asks loaded questions, like, “Does ___________ know about Proofreading?” Was their last email rubbish? Is this a rhetorical question to underscore  someone’s inability to string together two coherent sentences?

See? There’s just no way to know.

Some questions are rather vague. I really don’t know how to answer “Does ___________ know about Swedish?” Swedish what? Meatballs? Same goes for “Does ___________ know about Wireless?” for which I selected ‘yes’ because I happened to know what kind of bra this person wears.

There was a serious typo in one question: Does ___________ know about CRM? Uh, I have a question. Does LinkedIn know about Spellcheck?  The word you’re looking for is C-R-I-M-E, dumbass.

You get the picture.

The point is you have to be wary of LinkedIn endorsements. Sometimes, payforward is a bitch.