Have you noticed the new feature on LinkedIn? You can now endorse other people's skills and have your skills endorsed.
Receiving a skill endorsement is similar to a recommendation, however it takes less time and is easier to complete. Sometimes, a single word or phrase endorsement can have more impact than a lengthy written recommendation.
Right now, the full effect of receiving an endorsement is hard to tell. However, the number of endorsements you receive may eventually affect your search ranking and impact your word-of-mouth referrals.
So, how do you get more LinkedIn Endorsements? Check out these 5 tips below.
1. Edit Your Endorsements
Often times when your first log into LinkedIn, you are asked to endorse people with whom you are connected.
However, if you haven't gone back to update or edit your skills since you first created your LinkedIn account, then some of the skills that you originally claimed may not make sense to your followers.
For example, you may have listed skills that better applied to an old job. Now that you no longer work at that job, your current connections don't know you for those skills and it appears confusing.
Visit your skills section and edit them for your current position. This way when people first log in and your name pops up with skills to endorse, the skills make sense.
2. Arrange Your "Skills" in order of importance to you
Similar to step 1, when you edit your skills section you can order your skills by level of importance to you.
Why Order them by Importance?
This is important because,LinkedIn will only highlight your top 10 skills. Any additional skills that you've listed will appear in a "pile" under "more skills".
An Exception to the Rule:
Once your connections start endorsing your skills, then the number of endorsements will dictate the rank of each of your skills. This also makes it important to eliminate any skills for which you don't want to be ranked highly.
3. Move your Skills and Expertise Section to the Top of Your Profile
To make it easier for your connections to endorse your skills, move the "Skills and Expertise" section closer to the top of your profile.
To do this:
a. Click to edit your profile.
b. Scroll down to the "skills and expertise" section
c. Put your curser over the title "skills and expertise", click once and drag up.
d. "Drop" the skills and expertise section in the new place, higher on your profile. A couple of good locations for it are just below your Summary or after your Experience section.
4. Be Proactive, Keep a Watch & Edit
When connections first log into LinkedIn, they are now often prompted to endorse the other people they know. Here, your connections are given a list of the skills you've claimed. The connection then has the option to endorse all of the skills or only the ones they see fit/ know you for.
In this section, visitors also have the ability to write in their own endorsements. This means that if they don't like the skill choices available, they can type in other skills for which they'd prefer to endorse you.
Every time this happens, you will be alerted via email. It is important that you go in and check your new skill endorsements. If it is a skill that you no longer wish to be associated (perhaps an old job skill), then you can delete the endorsement.
Remember, you don’t want to confuse future customers.
5. Endorse Others
This may be the easiest way to receive endorsements from others. When you endorse your connections they receive an email notification. That email notification also asks them to endorse you. It's a win-win situation.
So, how do you start endorsing others?
To endorse another person on LinkedIn, you need to visit their profile and scroll down to the "Skills and Expertise" section. Here you can see what skills your connection has claimed. Then, you can choose to endorse them all or just one.
Remember, you only want to endorse skills that you Know the other person possesses. Your picture will appear next to the endorsement. Thus, if you've endorsed all of someone's skills simply because you "like" them, you may end up hurting your own reputation.
Have you started endorsing others?
What do you like about this new feature?
What don't you like about this new feature?
Please comment and share below.
Hi,
I like the concept of endorsements, in a way it is good to see yourself in other's eyes.
The limit to that would be that a real 360 is mainly a personal development tool to know yourself better, so that you can work on your weaker points.
Having the viewpoint of your contacts on your own profile may reveal certain blindspots, strengths you did not know or weaknesses you thought did not exist.
Is that one of the new gamification trick ??? LinkedIN seems to like those.
Best regards
Yves
Great points, Kim. I ALWAYS learn something from you blog articles. Thanks again for all you do and for all that you share!
Hope the new baby is doing well, Rob! Thanks for stopping in!
This is great information about linkedin Kim .. Thanks.. I need to get busy and get this right! My skills are not in the correct order ! My linkedin views have skyrocketed since Social Boom ! You are the best!
Love hearing this, Liz!
Awesome article, Kim! I didn't realize I had skills listed from my previous career that made no sense to my current business. I've just updated my skills and moved them higher up on my profile. Thanks for the great tips!
Love hearing this, Laura!
I can't see much diferences between this new endorsement function, and the traditional recommendations feature
It’s a click instead of a written recommendation.
Personal Branding And Profiling Your People Skills:
The most important and the most highly paid form of intelligence in America is social intelligence, the ability to get along well with other people. Social intelligence is also known as human engineering or “your people skills”:
Example:
Imagineer, problem solver, open minded, change leadership, never considers failure, sense of urgency, unshakable optimist, meaningful specifics, resourcefulness, open networker, takes initiative, encourages others, critical thinker, team synergy, shares knowledge…and the list keeps going.
“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun.” -~Pablo Picasso
"Even in lines such as technical engineering about 15% of ones financial success is due to technical knowledge and about 85% is due to one’s skill in human engineering.” ~ Dale Carnegie, Carnegie Institute, How To Win Friends annd Influence people.
Most skills belong to skill sets. You have the ability to list up to 50 skills.
The “85%” or so of your people skills should be listed to highlight how you go about orchestrating your technical skills.
"True effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden eggs) and the producing asset (the goose)." ~Stephen Covey
Good advice regarding the repositioning of the skills. However, possibly since the addition of this article, it shows "Only skills or expertise without endorsements can be reordered." The tips are valuable. Thanks!
Great article, Kim! I would only suggest that when endorsing others, as a return of favor or just for confirming their 'powers', avoid 'bulk' endorsements and limit to the set of skills that are known. With your permission I will share your post on my Facebook page.
Feel free to share, Christian!
thanks so much for the information. I really didn’t know how to work Linkedin. your information helped me so much.
Glad to hear this, Rene!