Market Brief: LinkedIn Skills Audit
If you were on LinkedIn in the early 2010s, you remember the endorsement era—when someone you met once at a conference could declare you an expert in strategic planning.
Collect enough endorsements, and voilà: professional credibility.
Years later, many of us have 50–100 skills sitting at the bottom of our profiles like a professional junk drawer. (Note to self: clean it up, Nicole!)
But LinkedIn is changing how it evaluates those skills.
With its new Hiring Assistant 2, LinkedIn can bring together your listed skills with your work experience, screening responses, ATS information, verifications, and other evidence of what you can actually do.
Wut? I know. It's true.
LinkedIn is starting to look for the receipts.
🎯 This week's actionable tip: Scroll to the Skills section at the bottom of your LinkedIn profile and choose the 10–15 skills most relevant to the work you want next. Ask yourself:
Is it attached to the role where I used it?
Does that role include a bullet or statement that proves it?
Can I point to a specific result, project, or example?
🧾 If you list Change Management as a skill, where did you lead change?
🧾 If you list Revenue Growth, what did you grow?
🧾 If you list AI Strategy, what did you actually build, improve, or implement?
Your skills should be attached to the roles where you used them. And the descriptions beneath those roles should include accomplishments or factual statements that prove those skills aren’t just decorative.
Because “someone endorsed me for this once” is not the same as evidence. And a sprawling, unfocused list can muddy the story you’re trying to tell, especially when nothing else on your profile substantiates it.
LinkedIn says recruiters using Hiring Assistant review 83% fewer profiles and find interview-quality applicants 33% faster.
Read that again: 83% fewer profiles.
That means your goal is not to collect every keyword you’ve ever brushed against.
It’s to make the right skills easy to find and even easier to believe.
Clear. Consistent. Credible.
Your skills section makes the claim. Your experience section brings the receipts. 🧾
