Most of you who use linked in would have definitely come across the raging recommendation disease. Note what I said just now. The issue is not with recommendation, but its actually with cross recommendation or the I-recommend-you-and-you-recommend-me-back syndrome. Here is an example from one of the people I have worked with which I did not expect.
Well, I think personally linkedin must ban this kind of cross recommendation even if it is genuine. This dilutes the very notion of a recommendation. I just dont understand what people think when they resort to this technique. Do they think every such cross recommendation would mean getting a job easily? In fact contrary to that notion these kind of cross recommendations actually dilute the perception about the two parties involved in such recommendations.
Any recommendation must be at actuals typically either from a leader, about the people who he worked with, or a genuine recommendation that an individual wants to provide about a person who according to him has leadership qualities that are beyond par for that role.
However this increasing trend of the recommendation disease is beginning to cast a doubt over the quality of linkedin and subsequently the people who are using it as well. With linkedin also tying up with twitter and perhaps facebook in someway, a real dilution of a professional network is only days away.
One can already notice the effects when linked in updates say things like – “… is reading a book on how to conquer the world”, “….is wondering about the next biggest technology and how it impacts his life” and so on.
Its about time linkedin also introduces an at actual feedback system where one can talk about what are the improvement areas that a person being recommended can concentrate upon. Since this would be chronological, people reading this can always judge how many years have elapsed since such a recommendation and whether the recommended person would have had a scope to effect such an actual improvement in his daily routines.
