Recruitment, job search... : Do you have the skills?

For recruiting pros and job seekers, skills are more important than ever. Here's why... And how to take advantage of it now on LinkedIn!

The traditional questions from recruiters, which are also reflected in most job seekers' resumes and cover letters, are all too familiar:

• What course of study did you take? What degree did you get? At which university or college?
• Where did you previously work? For which employer(s)?
• What position(s) did you hold? What role(s) did you play? In which sector?

These issues remain important. But they are less and less of a priority. Especially for recruiting professionals who are looking to expand and/or diversify their talent pool, to address shortages or to avoid bias (especially gender bias).

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Priority for companies

To put it another way, today, in a world (of work) that will/should radically change, it is the skills of candidates, and the skills they hope to acquire, that are key.?

According to a recent LinkedIn survey, 94% of hiring professionals agree that understanding the skills employees have (or don't have) is "necessary to make informed decisions."

And this trend is expected to grow. Competency-based recruiting is becoming the way of the future.

Three-quarters of recruiting professionals say it's a priority in their companies for the next 18 months.

LinkedIn in force on skills

For its part, LinkedIn, which is 20 years old and currently lists more than 907 million profiles, 63 million company pages, 129,000 universities and colleges... and nearly 39,000 skills, has been anticipating the movement for a long time.

Long before the beginning of this year 2023, decreed "European Year of Competences".

Long before the publication of its annual lists of the most sought-after skills, in general and in certain sectors.

Long before it was acquired by Microsoft (2016), for some 26.2 billion dollars (USD).

Long before it got its hands on the e-learning platform Lynda.com (2015), which became LinkedIn Learning (Premium).

But, truth be told, the trend has especially accelerated in the last few years.

Since 2019, the share of recruiter searches on LinkedIn that include a skills filter has increased by 25%.

In total, today, 45% of recruiters on LinkedIn explicitly use skills data to fill their positions.

LinkedIn, May 2023

For their part, LinkedIn members have added more than 380 million skills to their profile in the past year, representing a year-on-year increase of 40%.

In another sign of the times, in the U.S., which is often "on top" of the job market, 20% of the jobs posted on LinkedIn do not require a college degree, which is a 30% increase over the past six months.

So, how can we take into account this major trend, whether we are recruiters or job seekers? How can you "take advantage" of it, right now, on LinkedIn, the main professional social network?

Here are, in my opinion, the main ways to display your skills and to search for those of your future colleagues.

A boosted "Skills" section

The "Skills" section of profiles, in place since 2012, has evolved significantly. It is now largely pre-formatted, by LinkedIn's Sacred Artificial Intelligence (AI), on the basis of all the LinkedIn footprints left by the member and, by default, on the spontaneous recommendation of his or her first-level relations.

However, it is strongly recommended to (re)take control of the list of skills:

• By updating it, or deleting it
• By limiting it to 15 (junior) or 35 (senior) skills, even if technically it is possible to add up to 50
• By taking care of the order of the skills, by choosing at least the top 3 (displayed by default), to "influence" the votes of your first level relations, to gain social proof and to reinforce the coherence with the other sections of the profile, in particular the "Headline" and "About" sections.

As a reminder, recruiters who have the Premium tool can launch their searches based on this filter. So think in terms of keywords. But also in terms of groups and "tree" structure (Skills > Sub-skills > Sub-sub-skills), coherence with the job you are looking for and combination of skills related to sectors, tools and technologies.

On the other hand, forget about LinkedIn's skills assessment tool. It has little legitimacy and credibility (for now?) for human resources professionals.

Matching skills and experience

Next, whether you are looking for a job or not, pin some of your skills to your experiences. At least the one defined as the main "current" experience.

You can do this in two ways:?

1. from the "Skills" section, by clicking on each skill to link it to one or more experience(s), or even to other minor sections of the profile (training, licenses and certifications, project, publication, volunteering...).
2. from the "Experience" section, where you can even add skills not listed until now

LinkedIn recommends pinning 5 skills per experience, which the platform displays in order of recommendations received. But, to our knowledge, no independent study has yet evaluated the impact of this feature that appeared in May 2022. And our recommendation, from intuition, is to mostly link the top 3 skills with the current experience.

New: Linking skills and "About"

Newer (April 2023): LinkedIn now suggests linking its "Top skills" (max. 5) to the "About" field... Without giving any information on the ins and outs of this new feature.?

As a reminder, while there is now a serious doubt about the importance of this section in the good referencing of a profile, the "About" section is not activated by default. To do so, you must click on the button "Add profil section" and you'll find it in the "Core" list.

Search in job offers

Looking for inspiration to define your skills or determine what skills you are missing? Go to the "Jobs" tab.

Thanks to the search engine, access the job offers corresponding to your criteria... to discover the skills required for each of them.

Once you're on the list, all you have to do is complete your profile (or train for it)... or add some of these skills to your job postings if you're on the recruiting side of the force.

Discover LinkedIn's "Career explorer"

Another source of inspiration (but much less known): the LinkedIn channel on GitHub, in particular the "Career explorer", which promises to "discover new positions that call on your skills".

Specifically, once on the page, just scroll to the bottom (who said LinkedIn was the champion of usability?), until you reach this screen...

Start by selecting a reference city and your current or dream job from LinkedIn's (still limited) list.

On the left side, you will immediately find the skills usually pinned by profiles that have the same job!

And that's not all. In the center, in addition to a match with this or that job (test the popularity and similarity filters), you'll find 3 pieces of info:

1. The skills you need to perform this new job
2. The learning opportunities (which are bait for LinkedIn's paid learning offer)
3. The popularity of this type of career transition

Skills suggestions (Premium)

Just as relevant but reserved for Premium subscribers: when you simulate the creation of a CV based on your profile, by clicking successively on "More", "Build a resume" then "From profile", you can generate a list of keywords related to such and such a function.

Among these, skills, which could help you complete your profile (or your job offer) and, in doing so, be more easily found.

The "pathfinder" in LinkedIn Learning (Premium)

Finally, LinkedIn's "Pathfinder" asks members to identify their career goals - such as "growing your skills as a leader", "pivot to a new career" or "develop managerial skills", and then recommends a range of courses to help them acquire the necessary skills... via LinkedIn Learning of course.

Xavier Degraux?

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