When I do LinkedIn webinars I always get a question about LinkedIn Recommendations.  A common question is: what do you do with the LinkedIn Recommendation request from someone who you don’t know?

How utterly lame it is for someone to ask for a LinkedIn Recommendation if you don’t know them…. a LinkedIn Recommendation is essentially a professional endorsement.  Can you professionally endorse someone you don’t know, or haven’t worked with?

On my LinkedIn blog I wrote Model of a Letter of Recommendation of a Person You Are Unacquainted With (Benjamin Franklin).  Franklin’s writings are so fun to read.  Here’s most of the post:

My answer is to [these types of LinkedIn Recommendation requests is to] ignore (archive) [them].  Don’t even respond.

Here’s a humorous recommendation from Benjamin Franklin… you can find it on Google Books in Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin as well as inLittle masterpieces of American Wit and humor.

“Sir:  The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name  This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here.  Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another!  As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be.  I recommend him, however, to those civilities which every stranger, of whom one knows no harm, has a right to; and I request you will do him all the favor that, on further acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve.  I have the onor to be, etc.”

Hilarious!

Happy Fourth of July folks!  Think of your liberty and freedom and what you can do to keep it