Template for LinkedIn Recommendations
Writing a LinkedIn recommendation should be considered a form of gratitude. While writing recommendations isn’t terribly difficult, taking the time to think through your thoughts will make for a much better recommendation. I find it gets easier with practice, and of course, having a template to work from help make writing easier.
Here’s a template which works for me.
- How do I know the person:
- In what context did we interact:
- What are specific strengths the person brought to our interaction and the company as a whole:
- Recommendation:
LinkedIn will prompt for relationships. For other platforms or purposes, it might be good to state what the relationship is up front. For example, “I worked for Jane,” or, “Joe worked for me.”
Item 3 is really important, specifically, be very specific! Stating someone is “nice,” and “fun to work with” is not going to help the reader, will not reflect well on you, and may be a net drag for the recipient. Instead say something similar to:
She quickly grasps resume screening criteria, and on the very rare occasion, promptly corrects course to provide a continuous stream of high quality candidates into the hiring pipeline.
Being explicit also provides credibility to your recommendation. In the case above, it’s clear I actually did work with this person on a regular basis.
Check out other handy, predefined templates in Learn to write in a single draft.