LinkedIn Recommendation

What it is

A Recommendation is a paragraph, written by someone with their own name and profile attached, describing what it was like to work with you, buy from you, or be managed by you. It sits in its own section of your profile, separate from the Skills & Endorsements block, and it requires the writer to actually type something and hit submit. That friction is the point.

An Endorsement is a single click on a skill tag someone already sees on your profile. No story, no context, no risk to the endorser's reputation if it turns out to be wrong.

Why it matters to someone selling B2B

Buyers doing vendor research read profiles the way they read case studies: looking for someone who will vouch, by name, for a specific outcome. A Recommendation from a client who names the deal, the problem, or the result carries more weight than twenty Endorsements for "Sales" or "Negotiation," because the person writing it is putting their own credibility on the line. Sales and Marketing's advice to reps building out a profile is to ask current clients, colleagues, or partners directly for a Recommendation, and treat Endorsements as a separate, secondary ask (source: salesandmarketing.com). That separation isn't cosmetic. It reflects how differently the two are read.

The misconception

The common mistake is treating Recommendations and Endorsements as interchangeable social proof, or worse, assuming buyers skim past both. Reps will spend time collecting 50 Endorsements for skills nobody's checking and never ask a single client for three sentences about a real project. Endorsements are noise unless they're for skills that actually matter to your audience. Recommendations are signal, because they're attributable. A prospect can click through to the recommender's profile, see their title and company, and decide whether to trust the claim.

How it's actually used

Treat Recommendations as an asset you curate, not a byproduct you collect passively. Ask specific people for specific stories: the client who renewed twice, the manager who watched you turn around a bad account, the peer who partnered with you on a deal. A profile with three sharp, named Recommendations tied to real outcomes will do more work in a buyer's due diligence than a wall of Endorsements ever will.