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If you like screenshots and LinkedIn, hopefully you’ll like this post. If you don’t, you probably won’t.

Earlier today, LinkedIn introduced Endorsements, a one-click way to give professional kudos to trusted connections. It was a move I wasn’t expecting, but am not surprised.

It seems like a kin to how people have engaged blog posts in the last few years. Remember when more people commented on posts? Now it’s just easier to click social icons like these at the end of a post:

The same concept may apply to the new LinkedIn Endorsements. I somewhat joke by calling it the lazy person’s Recommendation. They’ve had their Recommended feature for years, but you have to essentially write down why you’re recommending somebody (personally, I like the Recommendations feature better).

I wanted to try this new feature and decided to endorse a couple trusted individuals.

First, there’s Barb Prindle from Snap Communications. I was able to endorse her by clicking the yellow endorse button on the top of her LinkedIn profile:

This part was a little confusing at first. More on this later, but it’s a good idea to X out any uncertain expertise. Also, LinkedIn appears to currently rotate different expertise options every once in a while when visiting profiles.

Anyway, I got this after I clicked the endorse button (not pictured – four random LinkedIn connections with potential expertise specialties):

After skipping through that part, I’m back at Barb’s profile:

Once closed, this appears just above her education information:

And on our respective LinkedIn home pages:

Looking back, I should have just chosen a couple areas of expertise. To me, it looks like I’m overdoing the keywords a bit.

After, I wanted to see if the LinkedIn Endorsement feature had the same user acceptance policy as their Recommendation option; emailing the user allowing them to accept the recommendation, or in this case accept-or-edit. I inquired with Barb and soon after received this partial email reply:

At first, Event Planning was a recommended area of expertise, I left it on and Barb took it off as this is not a specialty of hers.

That’s it for Barb’s endorsement. Still not 100% confident of the process, I wanted to endorse another trusted individual – the Cre8ive Director at ThinkSEM Consulting, Dave Dechant. Here were the expertise options when I saw his profile:

Dave’s a big Machead so I know he’s not a Windows expert. I don’t know how he is at competitive analysis and X’d them out, then added Web Design:

You know one area of expertise LinkedIn guessed right? Teamwork!.. as in everyone working together to achieve a common goal. Some places are good at working as a team. Others are not. Think embraces the team concept very well.

So, these were my first two experiences. Have you tried this new feature out? Let us know your thoughts.