Highlighting skills and learning achievements - LinkedIn Tutorial

- [Instructor] Your LinkedIn skills section is one of the most underrated parts of your LinkedIn profile, but it's also one of the most important when you're looking for a job. The skills you list in there affect how well you show up in recruiter searches, job recommendations, and even how closely you match the requirements listed in a job post. I'm going to navigate to Nick's skills section, and I'll click here to show all of his skills. He currently has 11 in there. Now, you can add up to 50 skills on LinkedIn, so it's important to add any relevant skills. Just make sure that if you're listing a skill, that you're confident you possess that skill. Now, notice that there are different types of skills as well. Up here, it says industry knowledge. We have tools and technologies, as well as interpersonal skills. Now, if I want to add a skill here, I can simply go in the upper right corner and click the plus icon, and I'm going to add one in here for Nick. You can see that they're suggesting some, and that's based on his account, so these are oftentimes very good suggestions. In this case though, I'm going to search for one and I want to search for Microsoft Office. I'll add that, and then you can tell them where you use that. In other words, which places were you at when you use that, and so on, and you can save that skill. Now it will be added there. Now I can add another one if I want by going in here and I'm going to add a soft skill, this time. I'm going to put in problem solving. Then I can check again where you've used that. In this case, it would likely be everywhere, so you're going to want to make sure you go through and fill this out, and when you're done, click on save and it will then add that skill. Now, just like keywords, I recommend looking through job descriptions, seeing what tools and responsibilities come up, and making sure that those words show up in your skill section if they are skills that you possess. You can also look at profiles of people who already have the kind of role you're targeting, and see what skills they've added. I've seen plenty of cases where someone looks underqualified for a job at first, but after a quick review, it turns out they actually do have most of those skills. They just never added them to their LinkedIn profile. Sometimes those missing skills are simple ones like Gmail, Microsoft Office, or Excel. Don't assume people know what tools you're comfortable with. Spell it out. Now, once your skills are in here, you do have the ability to reorder them. I recommend reordering them and placing the ones that you think are the most important up at the top. I'm going to click here on reorder, and I can go ahead then and drag these wherever I want. Let's say, I think this is very important. I want problem solving out there, Microsoft Office, I don't want to be very high. I just want that in here. I'll move that to the bottom, and like that, I've shifted those around. If I refresh that, I will get my new order for skills. So take a few minutes today to review and update your skill section. It's a small step, but it can make a big difference in how often you show up and how qualified you look when someone visits your profile.