I'm sorry, I find the above very cringe-worthy. You may as well write:"X is my friend. He has the same generic skills as his peers, and can't be bothered to network or re-train. He has a wife and kids, please emply him over the 300 equally qualified candidates, otherwise he'll lose the house, his wife will leave him and he'll end up festering in bed-sit land."

I have to agree that peer recommendations on Linkedin are generally worthless - how often do I see 'traded' recommendations? Recs from clients or superiors are of course more useful however, but I would not base a decision to contact or not to contact a potential candidate based on recommendations on Linkedin.

You got no friends then, Anon?

I'll be your friend. I'll send you a Linked In invitation. BTW can you recommend me first?

Recommendations on LinkedIn? PAH! I think it's just people sucking up to clients or people who they think they can use to get a new job in the future.Does anyone actually use LinkedIn for any meaningful purpose (other than stalking ex-colleagues)?

LinkedIn is now the single most important source of new hires for HCL Axon. We made 27 offers to people we sourced through LinkedIn last year and it will be a similar figure this year. And of all our hires in the last 3 years, 73% can be found on LinkedIn. Granted we aren't one of the big players in the consulting world, but LinkedIn is definitely a very hot topic at all in house recruitment gatherings.

The only useful recommendation is when you've got a direct referral from someone you personally know independently of the person being recommended. In most cases, this might be rare. Direct references from companies these days are truly worthless - they do little more than confirm the dates someone was employed, and if you're lucky their job title. As with anything, you need to take Linkedin recommendations with a pinch of salt. They are a very distant second to an independent referral but they are a lot better than the too scared to say anything company HR references.

Well, I for one am glad of the trend that company references are becoming worthless.Because, let's face it, who in their right mind wants their boss on the phone to your future employer, once you've just handed in your resignation? They're hardly gonna be over the moon about you, are they. Plus, most resignations are prompted by at least some grain of discontent which people are sure to know about.

in my experience most employer references are provided by HR who merely say when you were employed, how much you were paid and that you were or were not sacked for misconduct.

That's normal that HR should only provide very basic information. After all, how often does HR know the anything about the job you're really doing, not what the job description says?In my experience HR is a waste of headcount in many companies, whereas done properly it promises to have a real positive influence on performance.