3 LinkedIn skills and endorsements in view, happy with yours? [2 min read]

LinkedIn skills and endorsement, love ’em or hate ’em; you still need them! They are one of my fav topics to talk about, I’ve even got a post called: “I need to talk to you about LinkedIn Endorsements, trust me!“. All the reasoning in that article still holds true today. Only now we get to see less and need to use them more cleverly.

LinkedIn underwent a major overhaul early 2017, this affected how your skills displays big time! You can add 50 skills to your profile, yet only THREE are in full view! We used to see 10 skills with up to 12 endorsement for each of those skills.

LESS IS MORE WITH LINKEDIN SKILLS AND ENDORSEMENTS

Displaying 3 skills instead of 10 and just 2 endorsements instead of 12 is definitely less. At the same time, the way LinkedIn Skills and Endorsements are displayed now is considered more. Instead of just 12 pretty faces the two displayed are carefully chosen by LinkedIn.

We trust people over adds and people we know even more so! As you can see in the image to the left, which I took from Stephanie Ward’s Profile, the two endorsements for each skill have something in common. The first one shows a peer professional and mentions how many professionals with the same skill endorsed Stephanie. The second endorsement comes from someone in my own network and tells me how many people from my network endorsed this skill.

CHOOSE YOUR TOP 3 CAREFULLY

That is right CHOOSE, don’t meekly accept the choices LinkedIn makes on your behalf. Obviously you will choose 3 skills that people who consider hiring you are looking for. You probably have more than 3 desirable skills. In that case it is tempting to go for the 3 skills that have most endorsements. If there is a particular skill you’d like more endorsements on, you might be brave and stick that one on the top. Probably as #2 nicely cushioned with two highly endorsed skills.

HOW TO REORDER YOUR SKILLS

  1. Click your pretty little face top right
  2. Scroll down to ‘featured skills & endorsements
  3. Click the pencil’ next to ‘add a new skill’
  4. Drag the little lines to the right to move a skill
  5. Click save

One final thought: you can add 50 skills. Make the most of this. Recruiters search for specific skills, this is the only place in your LinkedIn Profile where you can list keywords without cleverly wording your sentences.

 

 

>>> TELL ME which 3 skills do you display and who those? <<<