Why you Should List Your Skills on LinkedIn – and How to Add, Edit and Hide Them

LinkedIn Skills and Endorsements have grown up somewhat, and although they can be a force for good, for attention getting and for disinformation, you can’t get away from the fact that you should have listed your skills on LinkedIn by now.  It’s a bit like getting your custom LinkedIn URL…..some have and some haven’t mostly because they don’t know how. 

The fact is that once you’ve listed your stills you need to show endorsements, otherwise people may think you don’t have any, does that matter?  Not necessarily, but LinkedIn is about offering the complete picture about you, what you do, who you are and what others think of you.  The problem, of course, is that some endorse just to get your attention, on skills they can have no idea you have, in the hope that you’ll a) contact them to thank them and b) endorse them back.  But honest endorsements are well worth having, and when I’m creating or updating LinkedIn profiles for clients I always include them.  You can hide or edit them later on if you want.

You may scroll down your profile and not see any section for Skills and Endorsements.  This is because you haven’t added any.  So here’s how to get started.
1.  Click on ‘Edit Profile’ when you hover your cursor over ‘Profile’ at the top of the page.
2.  Scroll down and you’ll see a field marked ‘Skills’.  Click on ‘Edit’.
3.  Start to add in your Skills by starting to type the name of a skill until one that matches appears.
4.  Click on ‘Add’, and then ‘Save’.
5.  Click on ‘Done Editing’ at the top of your profile if this is all you want to do.

To Edit or Remove Skills and Endorsements on LinkedInFollow steps 1 and 2 above
3.  Click on the ‘x’ beside any skill to remove it.
4.  Click on ‘Save’.
5.  Click on ‘Done Editing’ at the top of your profile if this is all you want to do.

Important Note – if you haven’t added in any Skills the field for Skills and Endorsements will not show at all on your LinkedIn Profile, and people (who you may or not want to endorse you) won’t be able to.

How to Hide or Reveal an Endorsement

If you receive an unwanted endorsement you can do the following:

Follow steps 1 and 2 above
3.  Click on the ‘Manage Endorsements’ link beside ‘Add and Remove’.
4.  When you then click on a Skill you can see who has endorsed you for that skill.
5.  Uncheck the box beside any person whose endorsement you want to hide, or check the box to reveal it.
6.  Click on ‘Done Editing’ at the top of your profile if this is all you want to do.

If you don’t want to show your Skills and Endorsements on LinkedIn

Follow steps 1 and 2 above
Click on ‘No’ beside I want to be endorsed.

You May Also Like – How to Get your Custom URL on LinkedIn.
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