We’ve already spoken about the importance of references and some of the things you need to do to properly manage them.
What about other forms of references, like the “Recommendations” section on LinkedIn where you get people to recommend you and say nice things about you? Certainly this is one example of how people can recommend one another using online means and how people who don’t know you can read about you in the eyes of other people.
In my experience and in my opinion, these recommendations do little to add to your credibility but they probably can’t hurt, assuming that they say nice things that are actually true and accurate of course.
I’ve seen online recommendations written about people who I used to work with – we’re talking lazy, unmotivated people here – and the recommendations would make you believe they’re a superstar. Some are actually quite funny when I read them because I know they are simply untrue based on the fact that I’ve worked with these people in the past.
Typically what has happened of course is that the person I worked with got a positive recommendation from someone…and then gave that person a positive recommendation too.
Quid pro quo I guess. You give me a good reference, I’ll give you one too.
And therein lies the problem. Many of these recommendations are simply two people trading nice words about each other for no other reason than the same reason why you follow someone on Twitter just so they’ll follow you in return, too.
You’re padding your stats and they’re padding theirs.
The days of written reference letters are long gone. No one accepts them these days and online references tend to fall into the same basket. They’re nice to have but at the end of the day, a hiring manager is most likely going to want to actually speak with your references on the phone.
