How to Write a LinkedIn Recommendation

A LinkedIn recommendation can be a powerful tool to help someone showcase their skills, accomplishments, and work ethic. Writing a thoughtful, detailed recommendation allows you to pay it forward and help colleagues, employees, managers, or students as they progress in their careers.

However, knowing how to write a strong recommendation that will actually help the recipient can be tricky. This comprehensive guide will teach you step-by-step how to write a LinkedIn recommendation that makes an impact.

How to Write a LinkedIn Recommendation

Step 1: Determine Who and Why You are Writing The Recommendation For

The first step is to determine who you will be writing the recommendation for and why. Common connections on LinkedIn who you may want to endorse include:

A current or former colleague
A current or former manager
A current employee or intern
A mentor who helped you progress in your career
A client you worked closely with
A friend from university or a networking contact
A recruiter who placed you in a job

Consider writing recommendations for people who:

You worked closely with them, allowing you to speak in-depth about their responsibilities, work produced, skills, impact, and performance
Demonstrated strong skills, competence, leadership abilities, communication abilities, and other strengths that set them apart
Had an overwhelmingly positive work ethic, attitude, accountability, and integrity
Provided you with mentoring, guidance, or other invaluable support in your own career

The reasons can be personal (wanting to help out a friend), professional (wanting to recognize an employee), networking-oriented (maintaining ties with recruiters), or a mix. Know who you are writing for and why before you begin drafting.

Also read: How to Post on LinkedIn: The Ultimate 2024 Guide

Step 2: Ask Permission First

Before writing the recommendation, ask the person for permission first. There’s nothing more awkward than someone receiving a glowing recommendation out of the blue.

It’s courteous to give them a heads-up. Simply send them a message:

“Hi [name], I wanted to write you a recommendation for LinkedIn highlighting your skills and contributions in [area]. Please let me know if you’d be open to me writing and posting one on your profile.”

This gives them a chance to politely decline if they’d prefer not to have one at this time.

Step 3: Gather Key Details

Prior to drafting, you’ll want to gather key details that will allow you to provide rich, authentic praise. These details provide critical context. Information to gather:

Colleagues? Manager and direct report? Mentorship? Long-term or short? Understanding the nature of your relationship and interactions allows you to speak directly to it.

What projects did you work on together? What were their key objectives and biggest accomplishments in the role? What deliverables, campaigns, or initiatives did they lead or participate in?

In what areas did they excel beyond peers and meet or exceed expectations? What special skills did they leverage? How did they push themselves? Their strengths form the foundation of your praise.

Recall any stories that demonstrate work ethic, strengths, or cultural contribution. Perhaps how they handled a difficult work challenge or went above and beyond expectations? Stories make your praise personal and memorable.

How did their communication, leadership, critical thinking, project or time management, decision-making, organization, independence, creativity, positivity, initiative, flexibility, self-motivation, attitude, accountability, emotional intelligence, etc. stand out?

Arm yourself with powerful details before opening a blank Word document.

Step 4: Open With a Personalized Introduction

Start your Recommendation summary with a warm, professional opening that notes:

Your name, current position, and company (establishes credibility)
How you know the person and your relationship context
Overarching positive impression of individual

“It is my pleasure to provide this Recommendation for Joan Smith, who I thoroughly enjoyed working with during her 2 years as Senior Marketing Manager at Acme Co. Reporting directly to me as the VP of Marketing, Joan proved herself to be a passionate, creative leader who drove innovative projects that propelled our business objectives across multiple campaigns.”

A strong opening provides authenticity and sets the tone.

Also read: LinkedIn Profile Checklist: The Complete Guide to Creating an Amazing Profile (2024)‌

Step 5: Provide Rich Details on Performance, Strengths, and Skills

The body paragraphs should provide powerful, convincing evidence on WHY this person deserves your endorsement and will be an asset to any networking contacts or future employers.

Provide robust detail highlighting responsibilities, work produced, skills/strengths demonstrated, achievements unlocked, performance metrics, specific examples/stories of their contributions, what made them stand out from peers, and the impact/results they drove.

Break down your praise across 3-4 separate paragraphs for these common areas:

Core Responsibilities, Contributions, and Work Products

Detail their primary responsibilities
Name specific high-impact projects that contributed to or led
Provide deliverables produced, campaigns created, or initiatives launched under their leadership
Share outcomes, results, and impressive metrics tied to their work

Example for a Marketing Director:

“As Marketing Director, Joan oversaw a department of 4 supporting all marketing channels, demand generation, digital advertising, events, sponsorships and PR. She directly managed our content team’s production of over 5,000 pages of technical documents and 20 eBooks per year.

Joan created integrated campaign strategies for 10 product launches that incorporated tradeshow booths, targeted digital ads, email nurturing tracks, and sales enablement material. Her 2019 campaign for our flagship cloud platform generated over 20,000 leads and $5M pipeline.”

Provide persuasive indicators of workload, responsibilities, deliverables produced and impact to showcase scope.

Standout Strengths and Skills Demonstrated

Call attention to the most impressive strengths and skills they leveraged. Consider soft skills, technical skills, leadership capabilities, knowledge and smarts. What made them truly excel?

“Joan brought strategic thinking, natural leadership, technical expertise, outstanding written skills, relationships building skills and incredible organization/planning abilities to her role. She has an innate talent for understanding buyer needs and designing campaigns that speak directly to target personas using personalized, consultative messaging.

Joan is a motivated self-started who takes on new initiatives without prompting. I was continuously impressed by how she translated strategy into executable plans and rallied resources across multiple teams to hit deliverables.”

Be specific – name individual strengths witnessed firsthand that made them excel.

Provide a detailed example or anecdote that brings your endorsement to life. Stories demonstrate work ethic, ingenuity, leadership skills, cultural contribution, or ability to succeed under pressure.

When our sales team desperately needed new messaging and collateral a month before a major conference, Joan rallied our writing team to rapidly produce 12 new sales sheets by having everyone temporality suspend other priorities.

She worked evenings/weekends for 3 weeks to personally manage every aspect of this mission-critical project. Her diligence and commitment ensured the sales team had the tools they needed to maximize meetings and her amazing leadership kept motivation and morale high under tight turnarounds.”

Vivid stories convince readers that your praise stems from direct observation versus being generic.

Cultural Contributions, Attitude, and Other Superstar Qualities Worth Spotlighting

Note what made them a beloved member of your organization beyond their core skills. How did they elevate team culture, morale, collaboration, training, mentoring, etc? What outstanding intangibles did they possess?

Beyond Joan’s stellar performance, she made our department a brighter place to work through her positive, playful attitude and genuine care for teammates. She mentored 3 interns during summer programs to get them excited about marketing careers.

Joan built friendships company-wide by planning networking lunches, happy hours and participating in the Party Planning & Diversity committees. Her creativity, humor and generosity were gifts to many colleagues over the years.”

Show they weren’t just talented individual contributors but made your entire workplace better through presence.

Also read: How to Add GitHub to LinkedIn

Step 6: Close With Forward-Looking Praise

Conclude your recommendation positively highlighting your growth mindset, continued potential and what this person could achieve in the future given the right opportunity.

Note what new challenges you’d love to see them take on next. Express confidence they will continue to accomplish great things as they progress in the targeted career direction.

List 1-2 job types, industries, companies, or positions you wholeheartedly could envision them excelling within next.

“Without a doubt, Joan has been one of the most talented marketers I’ve managed in my 10 year career. She is destined to take on senior leadership roles and has CMO potential written all over her. I cannot wait to see her creative vision and strategic skill applied as the marketing leader of a cutting edge company. Any organization would be beyond lucky to have her driving their marketing efforts.”

Close by emphasizing your unequivocal endorsement of their abilities and growth.

Step 7: Extend Additional Value Through LinkedIn Skills Endorsements

Enhance your Recommendation’s value by also endorsing the person for 5-10 relevant LinkedIn Skills that demonstrate their capabilities.

When writing recommendations, take 30 seconds to scroll through their Skills section and add check marks to skills directly tied to strengths and abilities you praise.

If any skills are missing from their profile that you want to validate possessing, you can type a new one to add + endorse.

Endorsing Skills boosts profiles’ visibility in talent searches by recruiters or hiring managers seeking those capabilities. Align endorsements to the praise shared on their behalf.

Step 8: Publish Your Recommendation to LinkedIn

Once your draft is polished, visit the person’s LinkedIn Profile and navigate to the Recommendations section.

Click the blue “Ask to Recommend” button.

On the form that pops up, copy/paste the full recommendation text you drafted into the large text box.

For the Relationship dropdown, choose how you are connected (colleague, client, mentor, etc.)

Finally, click Submit to publish your moving recommendation to this person’s Profile. They will be notified of your endorsement.

Best Practices For Writing Outstanding LinkedIn Recommendations

Follow these best practices to craft persuasive, professional recommendations:

Get consent first before writing so they expect and welcome the visibility
Gather powerful details on contributions, responsibilities, strengths, skills, examples, etc. to allow for thorough praise
Use a warm opening with relationship context to establish credibility
Focus on 3-5 STAR strengths/skills they leveraged to drive disproportionate value
Quantify and qualify achievements, deliverables, campaigns, metrics, and workload wherever possible to concretely demonstrate excellence
Tell 1-2 vivid stories that illustrate work ethic, leadership under pressure, cultural contribution etc. in action
Spotlight soft skills praises like communication, emotional intelligence, diligence, creativity etc. that showcase culture add
End with encouragement on future growth possibilities within the targeted career direction

Following this formula will result in recommendations that powerfully advocate for someone’s talents and abilities.

Step 1: Log in to your LinkedIn Profile

Step 2: Go to the recommended user profile

Step 3: Scroll down to the “Recommendations” section

Step 4: Select your relationship to the user

Also read: Why has LinkedIn become so expensive?

LinkedIn Recommendation Examples

Here are two LinkedIn recommendation examples showcasing the best practices in action:

Example 1: Recommendation for Former Marketing Manager

It was a sincere privilege to work with Rebecca for over 3 years while serving as her VP of Marketing at Acme Retail Company. As our Senior Marketing Manager, Rebecca produced outstanding work that significantly propelled our digital campaigns and demand generation efforts forward.

She refreshed content across our 10 most trafficked website pages to better speak to visitor pain points and search intent, improving pages’ monthly organic traffic by over 30%. Rebecca managed 3 junior content producers to deliver 40+ new blog articles and 12 eBooks annually that effectively educated our audience on industry trends.

She brought ingenuity, ownership, resilience, and compassion to her marketing initiatives. Rebecca has a sixth sense for understanding customer challenges paired with a creative aptitude for deliverables that directly address buyer needs and interests. When the pandemic hit, she rapidly adjusted our lead gen funnel and trade show strategy to seamless virtual/digital experiences minimizing revenue disruption.

Beyond core strengths, Rebecca uplifts every team she joins through the humble mentorship of younger marketers, spearheading culture committees, and forging genuine friendships companywide. She epitomizes servant leadership, leading by empowering others first. I cannot wait to see Rebecca progress next as the Strategic Marketing leader for a customer-obsessed organization – any smart company would be lucky to have her talent on their roster!

Why it’s effective:

✔ Establishes credible relationship
✔ Quantifies achievements
✔ Details of high-impact work examples
✔ Spotlights range of soft & hard skills
✔ Shows initiative and ingenuity
✔ Demonstrates cultural contribution
✔ Encourages future growth potential

Example 2: Recommendation for Account Manager

As CEO of Acme Technologies, I had the benefit of partnering closely with Samuel during his 5 years as our Account Manager. Samuel brought incredible passion, persistence, and work ethic to managing 60+ mid-market and enterprise clients. His attentiveness in providing white glove service ultimately is what retained and grew some of our largest multi-figure contracts.

He built trusting advisor relationships with every client through understanding their individual business drivers, challenges, and goals and connecting our solutions’ value specifically to what mattered most to each. Despite managing a book of business representing over $8M in contract value, he still found ways to surprise and delight accounts with personal touches and creative ideas for adding value.

When one manufacturing client considered canceling due to budget changes, Samuel orchestrated an onsite visit and needs assessment uncovering new use cases. His consultative approach combined with sharp product know-how allowed him to align expanded capabilities to emerging initiatives, resulting in a 3-year renewal and expansion worth over $500k!

Samuel contributes boundless optimism and selfless team spirit to our sales squad. He motivates newer reps, freely provides tips, celebrates collective wins, and leads by example on work-life balance as well. His hunger to grow equals his patience in mentoring others’ growth too. I cannot wait to watch him develop and empower future sales leaders who embody his virtues. Samuel would be an invaluable asset to any sales team ready to level up customer success!

Why it’s effective:

✔ Notes senior leadership rapport
✔ Quantifies client roster size and contract values
✔ Demonstrates white glove service approach
✔ Spotlights negotiation skills with story example
✔ Shows mentoring/cultural contributions
✔ Encourages growth to sales leadership roles

Leverage these recommendation examples as inspiration when drafting your own!

LinkedIn Recommendation Tips and Ideas

Beyond the core best practices, incorporate these additional LinkedIn Recommendation tips:

Get creative: Consider remixing traditional templates by opening with a story or ending with a metaphor. Or draft as a thank you letter. Inspire uniqueness!
Add multimedia: Embed charts, images, or infographics showing achievements or milestones to make content visually engaging.
Show don’t tell: Anyone can generically state someone excels at “communication” or “leadership”. Demonstrate HOW through vivid examples.
Align to their goals: What aspiring positions or future-forward skills would they love to build? Validate those areas.
Be specific: Not just “incredible marketing skills” but “Brilliant brand strategist who revitalized our visual identity and surpassed lead targets through creatively leveraging emerging TikTok trends no peers had tapped yet.” Details convey credibility.
Get milestones right: Double-check dates, numbers, campaign specifics, and metrics referenced. Inaccuracies undermine trustworthiness.
Talk growth trajectory: How far did they progress in X years? Were they promoted internally multiple times? Highlight accelerating development.

Little personalizations separate good recommendations from great ones. Brainstorm what makes this person special and worthy of a customized endorsement. Who Sees Your LinkedIn Recommendations?

Once published on someone’s Profile, your recommendation becomes visible to: