Now is the Time to Audit and Update Your Skills on LinkedIn!

Does December 2019 seem like a lifetime ago? I know it does to me. Back then I wrote an article about “Eleven Skills to Acquire and/or Feature on your Résumé” which was published on my LinkedIn profile.

Life continues, with its ups and down globally, but we must focus on our life and our work on a micro-level. Despite a spike in unemployment, employers continue to hire and promote. The economy keeps doing what it does. Kids are back at school. Restaurants and theme parks are carefully reopening to invite customers back. Health, safety, distancing, and sanitation activities feature prominently in our life. We value essential workers.

I am a certified résumé writer and career coach who is also a certified human resources executive. My goal is to help job hunters to be prepared to wage a job hunt with their best career search documents. Pandemic or not, applicants must acquire jobs and companies must hire qualified staff members.

The last article I wrote spoke about listing the best skills that you possess on your résumé. This article is talking about listing those same skills on your LinkedIn profile.

The skills on your LinkedIn profile help to define you. They are keywords/key phrases that help other LinkedIn members learn about you and recruiters to find you for new opportunities. Spending time curating and enhancing your list of skills is important. LinkedIn skills help to showcase your qualifications for positions and assist with further delineating your personal and professional brand.

Sometimes, I know that my clients have obtained more skills in a newer work role but their skills on their profile don’t reflect those skills; they reflect skills they had when they set up their profile a long time ago. When your current professional skills are listed, you will get the endorsements you need from your first-level contacts.

The perfect time to update your skills is after you have updated your résumé so that they match your business profile. Here is a LinkedIn Help article on how to add and remove skills:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/help/linkedin/answer/4976/adding-and-removing-skills-on-your-profile?lang=en.

You can also reorder your skills if you want. And please endorse skills on your connections to help them, those people that you have worked with, directly or indirectly.

There are four sections of the skills section: industry knowledge, interpersonal skills, tools and technologies, and other skills. The great news is that the skills are found in drop-down boxes. This makes it easy for you to type in a skill you have and find it, once selected it will go on your profile. You can also type in the first letter of the skill to find it.

I am zealous about the importance of managing the skills on your profile for your career development. Can you find the time to go into your settings and review what you have on your profile and compare to your résumé and make positive enhancements to your profile?

Career Advice Simplified is an experienced and full-service career services coaching company providing clients with strategic career planning, career coaching, résumé reviewing, résumé writing, cover letter creating, biography constructing, interview preparing, business social media  (LinkedIn) profiling, and personal branding. If you have the desire for a stepped-up career, we have solutions. Visit us at careeradvicesimplified.com.