LinkedIn Automated Skill Endorsements: A Powerful Tool for Simplified Networking
Optimizing your LinkedIn profile to attract potential employers’ attention, or simply to brag a bit about your litany of skills, can often be a tedious process. Yet, thanks to LinkedIn’s innovative tool, the burden of self-highlighting has become significantly less cumbersome. That tool is none other than its ‘Automated Skill Endorsements’ feature.
Understanding LinkedIn Automated Skill Endorsements
LinkedIn is a social networking platform specifically designed for business and career-oriented professionals, and has become increasingly popular in recent years. Crucial to its success is the adoption of features that facilitate professional development and networking, such as endorsements for specific skills.
The ‘Skills & Endorsements’ section of a LinkedIn profile allows users to indicate their expertise in various areas. Other users, often colleagues or connections, can then “endorse” these skills – effectively validating the owner’s proficiency in each claimed capacity. Thus, each endorsement adds value to your profile and presents your capabilities in a more credible light.
In 2018, LinkedIn introduced its ‘Automated Skill Endorsements’ feature. The algorithms behind this feature suggest to your connections (based upon your listed skills, experience, and their own skill set) what skills you may be proficient in. They can then simply click to endorse you for these skills. A seamless approach to the sometimes awkward task of requesting endorsements, it is a dynamic tool that benefits profile completeness and credibility with minimal effort required from the user.
The Value of Skill Endorsements
It is important to ask why skill endorsements matter in the first place? In a nutshell, the more endorsements you have for a particular skill, the higher your profile will appear in search results when recruiters or potential business partners search for that skill on LinkedIn. This can dramatically increase your visibility and opportunities for engagement within the LinkedIn community.
Endorsements also provide quantifiable evidence of your expertise. While anyone can list ‘Project Management’ as a skill, for example, having 50 endorsements for Project Management speaks volumes more about your actual proficiency.
Steps to Fully Exploit LinkedIn Automated Endorsements
To make the most of automated skill endorsements, you must carefully choose your skills. Make sure that these skills align with your current career goals and the image you want to project on LinkedIn.
It’s also helpful to be proactive and endorse the skills of your connections. Again, this is where the automated endorsements come in handy. By driving engagement with your connections through endorsing their skills, they are more likely to reciprocate and boost your profile in turn.
Another tip is to regularly review your “Skills & Endorsements” section. Over time, you may gain new skills, outgrow old ones, or simply want to highlight different areas of expertise. Keeping this section up-to-date ensures that the automated endorsements feature is recommending the most relevant skills to your connections.
Faults within the Feature
Granted, the automated skill endorsements feature is not without flaws. The algorithm, for example, can sometimes recommend endorsing skills that your connections may have little to no knowledge about – making the endorsement less credible.
This problem, however, is not necessarily insurmountable. LinkedIn is known for regularly updating and refining its algorithms to deliver a better user experience. As such, users can expect these kinks to be ironed out as the platform continues to evolve.
In Closing
Ultimately, LinkedIn’s automated skill endorsements feature offers a convenient mechanism to validate your professional capabilities and enhance your online reputation. With careful selection and management of your profile skills, a proactive approach to endorsing others, and an understanding of its limitations, this feature can be a powerful tool in your professional networking arsenal.