The Endorsement Economy

I have heard a lot of good things about Gary Vaynerchuk and his book “The Thank You Economy” although I have not read it nor have I used his services.  I do plan to read it over the summer once I get a break from classes/research/presenting.  I am creatively borrowing his book title for this blog post and the fact that I have no real interaction with him or his work is relevant to the content of this post. I use LinkedIn continuously.   I have a business account and use it to connect with different members to discuss research opportunities, interaction with classes and students at CMU.  I also do a little digging on the background of students, recruits, sponsors, etc.  In addition, I use it to present myself to folks interested in connecting with me, viewing my profile and discovering my background.  I have over 1500 connection on LinkedIn.  I would say about 30% of them are strong ties while ~10% are people I honestly do not know.  Not quite sure what their motivation was to connect with me in the first place – bolstering their network, looking for employment, sell me their services, etc.   So, the majority of my network is composed of weak tie (folks I interact with infrequently, in the past, social – not business related, or not at all).  I have something like 25 or so recommendations where I actively sought out a co-worker, client, boss, etc.  This was a conscious effort on my part that involved thought and time to identify connections I felt could give an accurate assessment of frankly what I bring to the table.  This has helped build my credentials as a consultant, researcher, and educator so I am very grateful for the time and energy these folks gave in crafting something on my behalf.

Now, Linkedin had enabled a one-click effort to endorse any of your connections.  Prior to viewing a connection’s profile, the top page (i.e. most lucrative real estate on the page) is dedicated endorsements. You can chose to Skip but then you are directed to another screen to endorse other connections.  Now you can ignore it or click out of it but there is a psychological factor being applied.  Seems almost like a toll to view a profile.  Recently, I have been receiving a number of these endorsements through LinkedIn.  I have been wondering how did these skillsets make their way into my profile, who gets presented with what skillset? what’s the difference between a recommendation and an endorsement, how does this effect my ability to be discovered via search through LinkedIn, what does this communicate to LinkedIn members, etc?  I’m sure there are a number of motivations associated with receiving endorsements running the gambit from egocentric to altruistic.  In terms of my endorsers, there is a mixture of direct and indirect engagement (strong vs. weak ties) but no easy way of discerning between the two.   You could do a little digging and figure out that one of the endorsers is my wife and the other is my sister.  That would be a strong tie, but not in this community or in this context.  So what issues arise from having random sets of connection endorse you?

Well relevance for one.  It seems to function similarly to a “Like” on FB where you are endorsing an individual but since this is LinkedIn, it needs to be connected to a skillset/expertise, which is where the difficulty lies.  Why did a particular endorser select “Strategy”, were they a student, client, co-worker, audience member or just some random person who heard through the grapevine that I have done strategic work in the past.  Worse, are they simply selecting some random skills to ingratiate themselves or just get rid of the endorsement selection box (remove a nuisance).  Other motivations might include reciprocity (tit for tat) and discovery (remember me?).  These might work to augment the endorsers profile and create a tighter tie between endorser and endorsee, probably skewed in terms of benefit to the endorser. I have 27 categories for endorsement.  I can pretty much say I have done all these different things (depending on your definition) but some I have not done in a long time while others I have done once or rarely.  There are functional tasks (project planning), industry competencies (Robotics) and general knowledge categories (Social Media).  Others are categories broken down into specialty (3 strategy categories - product, business and marketing).  Some skillsets I manually placed into my profile others where mined and placed there to augment my skillset.  But what happens when individuals endorse you for something in which they might not have any real knowledge of your ability to execute?

Could this lead to misrepresentation, you bet?  If you select a consultant, doctor, lawyer based on an endorsed skills they willingly placed in their profile, knowing they have no real experience in this area, is it deliberately defrauding the public?  Is there an ethical boundary they might be crossing….   The other sticky question is can people game the system?   If someone recognizes that they pop up in search results based on their connection to influential people, they might ask for endorsements rather than recommendations.  After all, this is much simpler than crafting a carefully worded recommendation, just check a box.  So, once again by not understanding context or motivation behind the endorsement could we say that it’s misrepresentation?  How do we know that the sole motivation for endorsement is not “tit for tat”.  Reciprocity can be tricky.  There is a little more at stake than with other social networks.  Now, I’m putting my virtual “stamp of approval” on something and could this come back to me if what I’ m endorsing turns out to be false, perhaps.

The long and short of it is we live in an endorsement economy.  Increasingly, we don’t buy products and services unless they have received favorable reviews.  It’s the same with people.  However, there is a difference between discovery and evaluation.  People are looking to get discovered based on their skill sets/background/connections, however hiring a contractor, employee, consultant will not be done until they are properly vetted.  Both phases are time consuming and critical, but the discovery part is rife with challenges that need to be optimized or they will become less effective over time.  Perhaps, a development opportunity to weed out false positives and ensure a robust endorsement engine…