We live in a world where there are numerous opportunities for growth in all aspects of life, including career. Job seekers have one common goal—to land their target job. One way to achieve this is by ensuring your job search documents are well-written. Make sure your job search tools—from your resume to your LinkedIn skills section—exhibit why you’re the best fit for the role.
Having a robust resume and other job application tools can increase your chance of getting the attention of recruiters. That said; you need to ensure that these documents can reflect how capable you are to take on the job. Remember, your resume and other job search tools are your first line of defense in marketing yourself to employers.
If you want to succeed in your job search, you are on the right page. We will discuss how you can improve your LinkedIn skills section, its importance and effect on your job application, and the skills to add to your LinkedIn profile.
Importance of Listing Key Skills on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one of the tools that can help you secure your target post. This is because most employers do a background check before hiring a candidate. They do this by checking the LinkedIn profiles of the applicants. Thus, it’s important to keep your profile updated and make sure it properly showcases your skills and qualifications.
Also, LinkedIn has a feature that lets you connect with other professionals and search for jobs. These features allow you to get job vacancy notifications. Because of that, looking for job opportunities has become easier.
Related Post: How to Write a Captivating LinkedIn Profile to Get You Hired Fast
This LinkedIn skills section is one of the most important features of LinkedIn. Hence, it’s best to take advantage of this. Here are the 3 most common benefits of maximizing the LinkedIn skills section.
1. Leave a Good Impression
As mentioned earlier, most recruiters evaluate the job applicants’ qualifications on their resume as well as on their LinkedIn profile. You need to make sure your skills and other info can leave a good mark. You can do this by effectively selecting relevant skills to showcase that you have the qualities potential employers are looking for.
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2. Improve Online Presence
When you maximize your LinkedIn skills section, it gives your profile a boost and makes it more searchable. The skills you include serve as keywords that are helpful in classifying your profile and filtering job opportunities. Plus, according to LinkedIn, the LinkedIn skills section boosts the chance of profile visibility.
3. Increase Chance of Getting Hired
Listing what you are best at gives hiring managers an overview whether or not you’re worth giving a shot. Your LinkedIn skills should include all your expertise that’s listed on your resume. This is so recruiters can validate your qualifications and evaluate if they suit the position.
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How to Manage Skills on Your LinkedIn Profile
Your LinkedIn skills list should be targeted to fully benefit from it. Nonetheless, you need to manage your skill set and optimize your LinkedIn profile based on that. Don’t worry if you don’t have any idea how to, because we’ve listed some practical ways to manage your LinkedIn profile skills.
Adding LinkedIn Skills
Managing LinkedIn skills isn’t that complicated. You just need to go to your profile and look for the skills section. Click on the plus sign to add your expertise. You can also add skills by clicking “Add Profile Section” below your headline, then selecting “Add Skills.”
You can list as many skills as you want. However, keep in mind that all skills should be aligned with your profile and career choice. Otherwise, it defies its purpose—giving an overview of why you’re the best candidate.
Expert Tip: Take the LinkedIn Skills Assessment to validate your expertise and know more skills you can add.
Editing the List
Once you already have the list of your skills, you can edit and rearrange them by scrolling all the way down to the LinkedIn Skills section. There you will see a pencil icon on the right-side of the screen. Clicking that allows you to edit that section.
Updating LinkedIn Skills
Keeping your profile up to date helps you get more job opportunities. Hence, make sure to update your LinkedIn skills, too. You can add a new skill or delete some by clicking the pencil icon, then selecting “Delete Skill.”
Related Post: Ways to List and Create Headings for Job Skills on a Resume
How to Endorse Skills on LinkedIn
Another feature of LinkedIn that helps professionals to have a wider network and a better chance of landing their target career is skills endorsement. This lets you and your connections endorse each other. Doing so boosts your credibility, as it’s a way for recruiters to see if your skills are validated and attested to by other professionals.
Leverage this feature by asking your connections to endorse your skills. You can also do the same for them by clicking on their profile. After that, go to the skills section and locate the expertise you want to vouch for. Then, click on the “Endorse” button.
Expert Tip: Get more endorsements by endorsing your connections. You can also ping your colleagues, mentors, classmates, and other people on your connection list who know what you’re capable of.
Top Skills to Add on Your LinkedIn Profile
Needless to say, the skills section—both on LinkedIn and on your resume—is important. Your qualifications and expertise are your keys to receiving an interview invite, and later getting hired. Therefore, you need to make sure to include both soft and hard skills in your job search tools. Check out our list of in-demand LinkedIn skills.
Top 20 Soft Skills
- Active listening
- Adaptability
- Attention to detail
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Creativity
- Emotional intelligence
- Empathy
- Flexibility
- Lateral thinking
- Leadership
- Open-mindedness
- Organizational skills
- Persuasion
- Proactiveness
- Problem solving
- Resiliency
- Sense of Efficiency
- Teamwork
- Time management
Hard Skills
- Administration
- Analytical reasoning
- Artificial intelligence
- Blockchain
- Business management and development
- Cloud computing
- Content marketing and management
- Digital marketing
- Network and information security
- Programming
- Project management
- Research
- Sales
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social media
- Storage systems and management
- Strategic planning
- UX and UI designs
- Video production
- Web analytics
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Tips in Listing LinkedIn Skills
Highlighting what you can bring to the table is crucial to rising above the pool of qualified candidates. That’s why knowing the top skills isn’t enough to seal the deal. You need to effectively plot your skills on your LinkedIn profile. That way, recruiters and hiring managers can have a quick look and weigh if you have what it takes to be part of their team.
To help you make the most of your LinkedIn skills section, here are some surefire tips for you to heed.
List them down.
The first tip is to list down all your skills, especially the most relevant ones for your career path. The LinkedIn skills section allows you to add up to 50 skills. Guess what? It’s fine to maximize it. The more skills you have, the better chance you’ll get more endorsements, leading to a more visible profile.
Plot them out.
Once you have the list of skills, rearrange them based on what’s more important and relevant to your profession and the career you’re leaning towards. This way, recruiters will easily see if you have the necessary qualifications to take on the job.
Keep them up to date.
To benefit from your LinkedIn skills section, you need to keep it updated. Add skills that you recently learned and delete those that aren’t that relevant.
Have Expert Professionals Revamp Your LinkedIn Skills Section
Many people strive hard to achieve their definitions of success, and we all have different ways of reaching our dreams. Did you know there’s an easier way to have your dream job? What you need is the help of a professional career development specialist who can aid you in your job search.
Get ready to reach the heights of your career ladder with a job-winning resume and a revamped LinkedIn profile. Let our expert resume writers take on the journey with you to fulfill your career goals. Connect with us today!