If you use LinkedIn, pay attention to skill endorsements and are a fan of the ‘Taken’ movie franchise, then 20th Century Fox and LinkedIn have a competition just for you…a rather strange competition.

Until the 23rd of December (at midnight) you will have the opportunity to get your LinkedIn skills endorsed by Bryan Mills, the lead character in the Taken films, played by Northern Ireland actor Liam Neeson.

In a YouTube video released a few days ago, the retired CIA agent makes an appropriately brooding plea to the people of LinkedIn to submit their “particular set of skills” for assessment, by liking the official Taken 3 page on LinkedIn. He then goes on to tell us that the winner of the competition will receive a video of him endorsing their “particular skills”… fair enough!

The competition is open to US residents only (we’re not sure why) and entries must be made before midnight on the 23rd December 2014.

Now, we have a few things to say on the matter (surprise, surprise)

We like Liam and we like LinkedIn….BUT

Other than being a lovely little curio, akin to having Peter Dickson (The X Factor voice guy) record your voicemail greeting, we’re struggling to find a discernable benefit to being the winner of this competition.

Sure, having Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills ’personally’ endorsing your particular skills, would be great, I mean who wouldn’t want that?  But what we really can’t seem to fathom is why?  How on earth does the word of a fictional character validate someone’s professional skills?

Not to be a wet blanket, but I thought that LinkedIn wanted its skills endorsement functionality to be ‘taken’ seriously; doesn’t aligning it with something so out of step with their intention throw its validity into question?

That is, the whole thing feels like a very uncomfortable coupling, as if the marketing folks at  LinkedIn and 20th Century Fox got together, determined to fit a square peg into a round hole and came up with this strange, hybrid, eyebrow-raising nondescript held together by only the most tenuous of gossamer links.

I mean, Liam Neeson must surely be the epitome of ‘cool, tough, unflinching man’ and LinkedIn is so, well… functional. That’s not a criticism of Linkedin in any way (indeed we are never done raving about how great it is) but its role is not (and never will be) to raise the pulse.

That being said, from what we can see the strategy  has received largely positive press over the last few days and no doubt ‘Taken 3’ will beneit from exposure in an unsual arena.   However I wonder if in the long run LinkedIn might regret its decision to partner up in such a seemingly unfitting way?

We shall see…