What Others Say About Your Work

A LinkedIn profile tells part of your professional story.

If you are reviewing your broader profile, start with How to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile: A Practical Checklist.

Your profile outlines your roles, experience and areas of expertise. It may describe the work you have led, the challenges you have helped solve and the direction you are moving towards.

Recommendations bring another perspective. They give clients, colleagues, leaders, team members and collaborators an opportunity to describe what it has been like to work with you. They can add colour, credibility and human detail to a profile that might otherwise rely only on your own account of your contribution.

For leaders, consultants, business owners and professionals considering a new chapter, recommendations can be a quiet but meaningful part of a thoughtful LinkedIn presence.

How recommendations support credibility

Most professional reputations are built gradually. They are shaped through the work you do, the relationships you build, the way you respond when things become complicated and the contribution others remember after a project, role or period of change.

A LinkedIn recommendation gives some of that reputation a visible place to live.

It may help someone understand:

• how you lead and work with others

• the perspective or expertise you bring

• the challenges you help people navigate

• the value you create for clients, teams or organisations

• the qualities people trust you for

For an executive, this may be evidence of strategic judgement, stakeholder influence or the ability to bring people together.

For a consultant or business owner, it may reflect the experience clients have had working with you.

For someone considering a board, advisory or career transition, it can help show dimensions of their contribution that job titles alone may not capture.

You may also find Do You Need a Personal Board of Directors for Your Career? useful if you are thinking about your next professional chapter.

Think about the story your recommendations are telling

Recommendations should not be collected simply because LinkedIn makes them available. The most useful ones support the professional story you want your profile to tell now. Consider what you would like people to understand about your work after they visit your profile.

Perhaps you want to be known for leading through change. Perhaps your strength is making complex issues clearer, building trusted client relationships, bringing commercial and people perspectives together or creating momentum across a large organisation.

Your recommendations do not need to say exactly the same thing. In fact, it is better when they offer different but connected perspectives.

Together, they can create a fuller picture of how you show up in your work.

Choose people who know your work well

The best recommendations come from people who have worked with you closely enough to say something specific.

This might include:

• current or former clients

• senior leaders or project sponsors

• peers from leadership teams or significant projects

• direct reports or team members

• external partners, advisers or collaborators

• board colleagues, where appropriate

Seniority is not the only consideration. A recommendation from someone who can clearly describe the context, your contribution and the outcome will often be more valuable than broad praise from someone with an impressive title but limited insight into your work.

When to ask

A recommendation is often easiest to request when the work is still fresh in someone’s mind. This may be after a successful project, a major milestone, a leadership transition, a client engagement or a period of close collaboration.

You may also choose to ask after receiving positive feedback in a conversation, email or review. The person has already expressed what they valued. LinkedIn simply gives them a place to share that perspective more formally. There is no need to wait until you are leaving a role or seeking a new opportunity. Recommendations can be part of maintaining a current and credible professional profile throughout your career.

How to request a recommendation on LinkedIn

LinkedIn allows you to request recommendations from first-degree connections you work with or have worked with. When someone writes you a recommendation, you can accept it, dismiss it or ask for a revision before displaying it on your profile. LinkedIn also notes that you can request or give only one recommendation per position, per member.

The exact steps may vary slightly between desktop and mobile, but you can usually request a recommendation from the Recommendations section of your own profile or from the other person’s profile.

When making the request, LinkedIn will ask you to confirm your relationship and the position you held at the time. You can also include a personal message with the request. 

Make your request personal

A generic request can feel like an administrative task. A personal note makes it easier for someone to respond with care. Briefly remind them of the work you did together and explain why their perspective would be meaningful.

You might invite them to reflect on:

• a project, client engagement or period of change you worked through together

• your approach to leadership, collaboration or problem-solving

• the value you brought to a team, organisation or client

• an outcome you helped achieve

• the qualities they most appreciated in working with you

You are not asking them to write your profile for you. You are simply helping them recall the context and giving them a clearer place to begin.

Quality matters more than quantity

You do not need a long list of recommendations. A small collection of thoughtful, specific recommendations is often more persuasive than many brief comments that say little beyond “great to work with”.

Review your recommendations occasionally, particularly after a significant change in role, focus or direction.

Do they still reflect the work you are doing now?

Do they help people understand the contribution you want to be known for?

Is there a perspective missing that someone you have worked with closely might be able to add?

Your profile should grow with you.

For more on profile positioning, read How to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out for the Right Reasons.

Offer recognition in return

Writing a recommendation for someone else is also a generous act of professional recognition. LinkedIn allows members to write recommendations for first-degree connections whose work they want to recognise. The recipient can then choose whether to display the recommendation on their profile. 

When a colleague, client, team member or collaborator has made a meaningful contribution, consider acknowledging it. Be specific about the context, what they brought and why it mattered. This is not about exchanging compliments.

It is about recognising work accurately, giving credit where it is due and helping another person articulate the reputation they have earned.

Let other voices add depth

Executive visibility is not only built through what you say about yourself. It is also built through the trust, regard and professional experience others are prepared to associate with your name.

Recommendations offer a simple way for those voices to become part of your LinkedIn profile. They can make your experience feel less like a list of roles and more like what it has always been: work done with others, remembered by others and valued in ways that extend beyond a title.

Looking for LinkedIn support in Australia?

Think Bespoke is a Melbourne-based LinkedIn consultancy supporting professionals, leaders and organisations across Australia.

LinkedIn profile writing for a clearer, stronger profile.

LinkedIn mentoring for practical support with profile strategy, career direction and professional visibility.