LinkedIn’s Skills & Expertise – Stop Rolling Your Eyes – It’s All Good!

Skills & Expertise is probably the most controversial LinkedIn experience I have heard people have. This is the “you’ve been endorsed for” section. So many people are getting endorsed for things they don’t do by people they don’t remember. Let me explain what is happening. The purpose of this section was initially created for recruiters. Prior to skills & expertise, If a hiring manager or recruiter wanted to find someone with Microsoft Excel experience there wasn’t and easy way to find them. So LinkedIn created the skills and expertise section so the searches were much more robust. Then the recruiters asked how they would know if the candidates were really good at the skills they had listed, so LinkedIn responded with endorsements. Unfortunately, they way it was rolled out was in a way that people were endorsing people just because they were showing up in big blue boxes on their screen saying “Does Rich have all these skills?” endorse here. And many people do.

I actually only endorse people that I am confident do a good job. I am spending my political capital and reputation and it is important to me that I stay authentic.

Adding and Removing Skills

You can add and remove skills from the Skills & Expertise section. It is important to list relevant list skills on your profile that will allow someone to understand your value and strengths. Also,  because this section was developed for search capabilities, Google indexes this section so it is important for SEO purposes to optimize the keywords here is very important

To add skills:

1. When in edit profile, scroll down to the Skills & Expertise section and click the edit icon in the top right.
2. Type the name of a skill and then choose it from the dropdown list that appears. If your skill doesn’t appear, completely type in the skill name in the field.
3. Click Add.
4. Click Save.

You can add up to 50 skills to your profile. Skills with the most endorsements will be listed first. The only way to move the order of skills is to manage the number of endorsements for the skill or hide a skill. As you will see in manage skills below, I am able to uncheck people’s endorsements which will lesson the number of endorsements and ultimately will fall below a hire endorsed skill. Hiding specific skills will move others to the top as well.

Skills without endorsements are displayed according to when they were added.

To remove skills:

1. When in edit profile, scroll down to the Skills & Expertise section and click the edit icon in the top right.
2. Click the X next to any skill to remove it or drag and rearrange any skills without endorsements
3. Click Save.

Managing your endorsements.

You can control who shows up on your endorsements and who doesn’t.  If you are endorsed by someone and you would prefer that it not show, you can manage your endorsements.

You can choose to hide or unhide your skill endorsements.

1. When in edit profile, scroll down to the Skills & Expertise section and click the edit icon in the top right.
2. Click the Manage Endorsements link. This is next to Add & Remove.
3. Click on a skill in the left column to reveal the connections who endorsed you for that skill. You may need to use the scroll bar on the left side of the box to view skills further down in the list.
4. Uncheck the box next to any people whose endorsements you want to hide. Or, check the box next to any you want to unhide.
5. Click Save.
6. Click Done editing in the top section of your profile.

If you are in an industry such as Financial Services and you are restricted from having endorsements show, you can hide all of your endorsements by default. This will keep all existing and new endorsements from ever displaying on your profile.

TIP: If you don’t want a specific person to endorse you, you can remove the connection between the two of you. They will not be notified if you break the connection.