Optimise your LinkedIn profile and stand out through skills and endorsements (with a great little hack to make it easy)

I remember when skills and endorsements first came out, LinkedIn allocated skills based on words in your profile and at that time everyone said what is the point of skills, how relevant are they?

It turns out that skills are one of the most important elements to optimise your LinkedIn profile

• Skills and the number of endorsements a person has influence the algorithm and help you come up higher on search results.
• When a recruiter advertises a job, they are prompted to add up to 10 skills for the position. These are used to match candidates and show relevant adverts to you.
• Recruiters use a premium version of LinkedIn Recruiter to directly hunt for relevant candidates and fill their vacancies which may or may not have been advertised in the market. Each recruiter will have their own way of searching for candidates but filtering profiles by skills is a strategy that some use to narrow down the search.

How to optimise your skills, a simple hack

LinkedIn has a huge database of skills (hard skills and soft skills) with many that are different ways of describing the same thing. It feels like you are shooting in the dark when you search to add skills to your profile.

One great way to ensure the skills you are adding are relevant to the market requires a premium account.

1. Go into the job database on LinkedIn and search for adverts that align with your current job, and if you are looking for work, search for jobs that align with your target position.
2. Click into relevant job adverts, scroll down past the description and if the recruiter has allocated skills they will appear below this information.
3. Skills you have on your profile have a green tick; missing skills have a grey one.
4. Write down skills you are spot that you demonstrate but are missing from your profile.
5. Add these to your profile and prioritise the order with the most important skills first, these are skills that are essential to your job.
6. Ensure that your endorsement settings are all open “I want to be endorsed” etc. You can find this option when you click into the skills section on your profile and click into the three dots at the top of the section.
7. Endorse people you know and deal with for skills you know they demonstrate, this will attract reciprocal endorsements.

This is just one of the many things I coach my clients in when I am writing their LinkedIn profiles.

I write CVs, LinkedIn Profiles and coach people on effective job-hunting. I help my clients achieve their career goals, earn more money and get headhunted for great jobs. I incorporate their experiences and learning in my processes to ensure the advice I provide is effective and on point.?For more information, give me a call on 0437 590 411 or have a look at my website:?www.nbcareerconsulting.com.au