Many people are confused about skills on LinkedIn. Random people seem to endorse you for things you’re not even good at. And the things you are good at don’t show up in your skills list.
So what’s all this about skills and endorsements, and why should you care? (Tweet this thought.)
The Problem With Recommendations
LinkedIn ran into a problem with recommendations. They were unquantifiable and related only to positions you held, rather than things you’re actually good at. So if someone recommended me for my past position at Cisco and said I was good at networking, LinkedIn would only know that I got a recommendation for Cisco, not for networking.
When they released their recruiting product, and recruiters wanted to see candidates based on what they could do, LinkedIn couldn’t deliver. So they started to assign “skills” to people.
With skills, recruiters can now search and sort candidates based on what skills they have and how many endorsements they have for those skills. It’s sort of like a peer-reviewed keyword list. But more than just that, those keywords have the endorsement of your peers vouching for you.
That’s the basic concept. The question is, do skills with more endorsement truly reflect an actual competency?
Based on something called “Swarm Theory,” the answer is yes. I know that seems hard to believe, but here’s how it works:
Basically, with hundreds of people in your network each choosing to endorse, on average, six of your skills, the theory states that your real skills will rise to the top while the others may get a few votes, but won’t be top 10. (You can read about Swarm Theory here.)
How to Make Your Endorsements Valuable
In order to let the wisdom of crowds influence your skills, you must do the following:
- Have more than 10 skills. The 10 that will show up, according to Swarm Theory, will be your real really top 10; these are the ones that are supposed to have many endorsements. If you only have 10, well, that kind of ruins the idea.
- Manually add 50 skills you want to be associated with. You can have up to 50. So why not fill them all up with things you want, and then let your network pick the ones they think best represent you?
- Include both general and specific skills. If you’re in sales, pick “sales” but then also pick the skills that relate to your sales training, what you sell and so forth. If you’re an engineer, pick “engineer,” then also pick what it is you work on, which processes you use and so forth.
How have you optimized your LinkedIn profile? Share in the comments!
This post originally appeared on Career Enlightenment.
Image: Flickr
