How to Request a Recommendation on LinkedIn

When you identified in your mind the person (or people) you want to write LinkedIn Recommendations for you, you’re ready to create a Recommendation request. To get started on authoring your request, follow these steps:

Click the Profile link.

Your personal Profile contains a listing of all your personal information, such as your education and work history, including any recommendations you have received from people you know or have worked with.

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Request an endorsement.

Scroll down to the position for which you want to request an endorsement and click either the Request Recommendations link or the Manage link. If you don’t have any recommendations yet for a certain position, select the Request Recommendations link under the position information.

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Fill in the names of the connections you would like a recommendation from.

Alternatively you can click on the View All Connections icon to select from your connection list.

You can send this request to as many as 200 people.

You will see a new window pop up like the one shown here. Scroll through your list of first-degree connections and click the check box next to each person to whom you would like to send this Recommendation request.

Click the Finished button.

The Connections window closes and you go back to your Request Recommendations screen.

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Type your message.

You should not accept the boilerplate text that LinkedIn fills in, but rather customize it to create a personal note, like the example shown here. You can customize not only the body of your message but the subject line as well.

Check your spelling and grammar and click the Send button to send your request.

The Recommendation request is sent to the intended recipient(s).

Giving people some context as to why you’re making the request helps motivate them more effectively. Also, even though you should be asking only people that would be comfortable recommending you (you are, aren’t you?), you still want to give them a gracious way to decline.

Remember, you’re asking a favor. The person you’re contacting is in no way obligated, so don’t expect anything and you won’t be disappointed.

There’s really no such thing as too many Recommendations, as long as the quality is good. Even if you have just two or three mediocre ones, people will start to think that a lot of them are fluff. LinkedIn doesn’t give you control over the display order either, so you have all the more reason to make sure that the ones displayed are good quality.