LinkedIn Endorsements for Skills You Never Listed

Forty endorsements for the wrong skill

An accountant's LinkedIn profile shows forty endorsements for public speaking near the top. Tax planning, the work clients actually hire her for, has none.

She gave one talk at a business breakfast two years ago. Someone endorsed her for speaking, she accepted the notice, and the number has grown ever since.

A prospective client skimming the profile sees a speaker who also does some accounting. The profile is saying something she never chose to say.

How suggestions turn into endorsements

When someone visits a connection's profile, LinkedIn shows a box asking whether that person has certain skills, with a button to endorse them all at once.

The skills in that box are LinkedIn's suggestions, and they can include skills the person never listed. Endorsing takes one click and costs the visitor nothing.

When an endorsement arrives for a skill not on the profile, LinkedIn asks whether to add it. Many people accept without thinking, and the skill joins the list.

Skills with the most endorsements rise to the top and are suggested again, so an early accident keeps collecting clicks long after anyone remembers why.

What a visitor reads first

The top of the skills list is what a prospective client sees without opening anything. On many profiles it holds some mix of these:

• Skills you never offered, such as public speaking for an accountant who rarely speaks.
• Skills that overstate, which matter most in regulated professions.
• General skills like management or customer service that say nothing about the work.
• A missing specialty, because nobody was ever prompted to endorse it.
• Endorsements from people who cannot know your work, such as a cousin or a former classmate.

Each one blurs the answer to the question a client brings to the profile: what this person does, and whether it is what the client needs.

Removing skills that mislead

In the profile's edit view, each skill can be removed. Its endorsements go with it, which is the point: a large number attached to the wrong skill is worse than no number.

Remove any skill describing work you do not offer, or a qualification you do not hold. Then remove the vague ones that would fit anybody in any office.

It can feel like throwing away goodwill. It is not: nothing else on the profile changes, and the endorsements on skills you keep stay where they are.

Putting the real work first

Add the skills clients hire you for, in the words they would use, and drag them to the top of the list.

Ten or fifteen specific skills say more than fifty general ones. A tax practitioner's list might lead with tax planning, personal tax returns and small business accounting.

New skills start with few endorsements, and that is fine. A visitor reads the top of the list first, and the order is now yours to set.

Hiding endorsements and suggestions

LinkedIn also lets you choose, skill by skill, which endorsements are shown. One from someone who could not know your work can be hidden without removing the skill.

The endorsement settings also decide whether your connections see suggestions about you at all. Turning them off stops new accidents, and the endorsements you kept remain.

Endorsements can be turned off entirely as well. Few profiles need that; tidying the list and stopping the suggestions usually settles the matter.

A worked example

A trademark agent works from a small office in Vancouver, handling searches, applications and oppositions for small businesses and startups across the province.

Her profile's top skills were intellectual property, patents, litigation and public speaking. Nothing mentioned trademark searches, the work most of her clients start with.

Patents and litigation were the real problem. She is not a patent agent and does not appear in court, and a client reading the list could reasonably assume otherwise.

She removed both, along with public speaking and two general skills. Trademark searches, trademark applications and brand protection now lead the list, followed by intellectual property.

She hid endorsements from relatives and turned off suggestions to her connections. Her headline now names the service and the clients it is for, in plain words.

The profile now says what she does before anyone reads her summary, and it no longer hints at work she cannot take on.

The line under your name

Skills are a list near the bottom of the page. The headline under your name travels with you, into LinkedIn's search results and beside every comment you leave.

Write it as what you do and for whom: tax planning for owner-managed businesses, rather than a job title alone. Then let the summary explain how you work.

A headline of plain words does what a column of endorsements cannot. It tells a stranger, in one line, whether you are the person they were looking for.

Titles in regulated professions

Accountants, agents, engineers and many others work under titles their regulator controls. A skills list that implies a designation you do not hold can raise questions you would rather avoid.

Use your title exactly as your regulator allows, and check its rules on how members may describe their services. If a rule is unclear, the regulator can answer before a client asks.

The counter-case

Some people's endorsements already match their work closely, and for them none of this is urgent.

Many readers know endorsements are given with one click and weigh them lightly. A recruiter searching by keyword may even find a long, broad list useful.

But the top of the list is the first thing a client sees, and it should describe the work you want to be hired for, not the talk you gave once.

A profile that says what you do

1. Read your profile as a client would see it.
2. Remove skills you do not offer or hold.
3. Add the services clients hire you for.
4. Drag them to the top of the list.
5. Hide endorsements from people who cannot know your work.
6. Turn off suggestions to your connections if they keep misfiring.
7. Rewrite the headline as what you do and for whom.

Step seven reaches furthest. The skills list sits low on the page, but the headline appears beside your name almost everywhere LinkedIn shows it, and it is entirely in your words.

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Frequently asked questions

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