Skills and endorsement must be the topic I wrote about most often. Back in 2014, to let you know how to receive genuine LinkedIn Endorsements. Back then people still received suggestions that could be a bit off the mark. A year later you were able to read all about the importance of LinkedIn Skills and Endorsements.  Last year (May 2017) LinkedIn gave the Skills and Endorsement section a new look. It actually added more backbone to the endorsements, as they first showed us endorsements by peers with the same skill and endorsements by people you (the viewer) have in common. This was also the time LinkedIn started showing just 3 skills instead of a bingo card full.

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EVERYTHING (NEARLY) LOOKS DIFFERENT

Early 2018 we saw a massive change to the LinkedIn Profile roll out. Most noticeably your pretty face now lives on the left when viewed from desktop and is still centred when viewed on mobile. Lots of fun creating a banner that works on both devices. You can find out about the other changes in this article.

LINKEDIN SKILLS AND ENDORSEMENTS CHANGES

LinkedIn now orders your skills in categories. There are 5 categories and you have no say in what skill goes where or the order of the categories. Here they are listed in the order they display on your profile You need to click “show more” to see them, otherwise you will just see the top three skills.

• Industry Knowledge
• Tools and Technologies
• Interpersonal Skills
• Languages
• Other Skills

YOU DO HAVE SOME CONTROL

LinkedIn shows 3 skills and endorsements to your profile visitors. This always used to be the 3 with most endorsements. Presumably, this is still the case. What I KNOW is still the case, you can control this. They each have a blue pin in front of them. Any skill you do not want to be featured, click the blue pin to deselect. Now click the pin in front of a skill you do want to show off.

All other skills are sorted into the above categories. You have no control over that. In my case that means all LinkedIn related skills live in the bottom bucket “Other skills”. Had I left Facebook and Twitter on my profile, they would have been listed under “Tools and Technologies”. You CAN still reorder your skills, only this is now limited to within the category. Just grab the hamburger (three lines) to the right of a skill and click and drag.

ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONALITY ON MOBILE

When endorsing someone on your mobile device, like I did for my friend Jo Saunders, you get asked for a rating. LinkedIn explains that the recipients do not get to see this. What exactly they do with this rating we don’t know yet, but most likely it has to do with some algoritmethingemebob so sooner or later it will be important. See images below for an explanation.

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>>> Skills and Endorsements are not going anywhere. How do you feel about them? Please share your thoughts, feelings, questions in the comments. <<<