Why You Should Give / Receive LinkedIn Recommendations Ep 003

Key Takeaways:

• Rebuild Your Confidence: LinkedIn recommendations can be a powerful tool to rebuild your self-esteem after a job loss. By seeing positive feedback from colleagues and peers, you can regain confidence in your abilities.
  
  
• Leverage Social Proof: Positive recommendations act as social proof, validating your skills and experience. This can be particularly beneficial when applying for new jobs, as potential employers often rely on social proof to assess candidates.
  
  
• Strengthen Your Network: By giving recommendations to others, you're not only helping them but also strengthening your network. This can lead to future opportunities and collaborations.
  
  
• Take Control of Your Career Narrative: Actively seeking and giving recommendations allows you to shape your professional identity and take control of your career narrative. By proactively building your online reputation, you can position yourself as a valuable asset in the job market.
  
  
• Practical Steps to Implement:
  • Identify Supportive Contacts: Reach out to former colleagues, mentors, or clients who can provide positive feedback.
  • Draft Thoughtful Recommendations: Take the time to write sincere and specific recommendations, highlighting the individual's strengths and contributions.
  • Be Open to Receiving Feedback: Be receptive to receiving recommendations from others. This can provide valuable insights into your professional image.
  • Leverage LinkedIn's Features: Use LinkedIn's recommendation feature to easily request and provide endorsements.

Resources mentioned:

VIDEO - Wondering how to request a LinkedIn recommendation? WATCH THIS.
https://youtu.be/6US9qFqDlHk?si=1CPktdVPkYB4_6xX 

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Transcript

Today's episode, I want to talk about technique that you can do in LinkedIn. That's going to help to build your self confidence and build back that self worth. I know when you've been in a career transition, not by choice, it can be very devastating and, at a very psychological level as well, right?

Because we wrap so much of our identity around our job. And when you lose your job, when you're told that the job is no longer a position that you're in, it jars you. right? And you go through this process where you might be even struggling with, gosh, was I as good as I thought I was? I thought I had a great career.

I thought I was delivering value to the company. I thought my teammates, my management team, I thought they all liked me. I thought they thought I was smart and that I'd brought something to the table, but maybe I was wrong. I've gone through this in my own head. That's why I feel comfortable sharing this with you.

And, here I am sitting today. It's 2024. The last career transition I went through was in 2017. And I went through that for a few months on and off. And then my business started to take off and I realized my business was a success. So it probably was just opinions. And other people had that I didn't bring that value to the company because the value I bring to you today is based on my journey to get to you.

So I'm going to share with you a technique that helped me as I was going through that process, and I think it's going to help you as well. Now, after you've been let go, laid off, etc. from a company, there's going to be people who reach out to you. And whether it's by text, by email, by letters or cards they send to you in the mail, et cetera, there's going to be people who reach out to you and they're going to say things like this.

Hey, Brenda, if you ever need anything, let me know. Something along those lines, they're showing their support and they're saying, how can I help you? Now, I want you to get in the habit when those people, when they outreach to you, I want you to get comfortable saying, Yes, I actually would love your help with something.

We're connected on LinkedIn. Could you give me a recommendation there and let people know the value of who you are. Working with me, if they work with you in an experience role, definitely touch upon that. You might have some people say I'm struggling with what to write. And you might say back to them, I'd be happy to draft something for you.

And then you can rewrite it in your own words. Now getting these recommendations. I think this is pure gold because it sits. on your LinkedIn profile. These are public and it might be something that's read by a hiring manager or recruiter or somebody on the interview team, who's looking through your LinkedIn profile and activity when they say, when they see that other people are saying nice things about you, and especially about the quality of your expertise and how you were as a team member or a leader, it helps to create social proof in their minds and social proof is a concept that's definitely very real.

We believe more often what others say about you, your products, your services, your expertise than what you say about yourself. So that's real value for you as a potential candidate to get recommendations on your profile. The other thing that it does, my friend, is it helps you to build your confidence back because you see people saying things about you that you felt  And then you went through this career transition and things got a little murky in the middle, right?

But when you see people saying, she was the best marketer I ever worked with such a strong manager of a team and the ability to bring people together and listen to different ideas. So they talk about. new programs that you implemented, how you save the company money, how you help with productivity.

All of these things are really great things to do. And you know what I do? I treat this as like a rainy day fund, so to speak. So when I'm having a down day, I look through my LinkedIn recommendations and I read what people have said about me. That's going to help to lighten me up. It's going to help me to feel more confident about myself.

And I want to encourage you to do the same thing as well.  Now, when I'm coaching a client, when I look at their recommendation section, my advice to them, I'm going to share this with you, is that you have at least one recommendation received and one recommendation given in the current year. Now, there's a good possibility if your company has gone through some restructuring or layoffs, you were not the only person affected, and you probably know who the others are, right?

We find out these things pretty quickly, even if the company doesn't publish a list, we're all friends, we communicate through cell, right? And we communicate. What the updates are. So I want you to think about reaching out to someone else who has been laid off in the same wave as you. And if you feel comfortable doing so, give them a LinkedIn recommendation, speak about the value they offer to the organization, speak about what it was like to work with them.

Try to make it a good paragraph in there. And you could even reach out and say, is there anything specific you'd like me to say in your LinkedIn recommendation? I know that they're going to appreciate it. You're building up social media karma. You're filling their bucket with these really great words, right?

It's going to make you feel good as well.  You, when you're going through a career transition, not by choice, it can definitely feel like you're out of control of the situation and that the world is happening to you. I want to encourage you to get some of that control back. Reach out to the people who are supportive of you and ask them for a LinkedIn recommendation.

And I also want to encourage you to be the change and the positivity that you want to see in the world. And let's give other people recommendations as well.  All right. Last thing to keep in mind is you do need to be a first level connection on LinkedIn to give someone a recommendation. And I think I might have a YouTube video below that shows the steps that you can go through.

I'll drop that into the show notes. If you have any questions about this technique, feel free to message me on LinkedIn, or you can email me at brenda at mellermarketing. com. I hope you enjoyed the episode today, and I look forward to seeing you on LinkedIn.