LinkedIn skills and recommendations: the complete guide

These are the two sections people fill in hastily, and the two they understand least well. Skills are not a list of qualities: they are the index recruiters search you in. Recommendations are not decoration: they are the only part of your profile you do not write yourself. Two different roles, two different methods.

Skills are an index, not a showcase

When a recruiter looks for a profile, they filter by skill. Your list is therefore not a description of yourself: it is the set of queries you can appear in. A skill you have but have not declared makes you invisible for that search, however good the rest of your profile is.

That changes entirely how you fill it in. The question is not « what am I capable of? » but « which terms do I want to be found on? ».

Which ones to choose

Start from the job ads that interest you rather than from memory. Collect ten postings matching your target role and note the skills that recur: those are the terms recruiters in your field actually use, and they are not always the ones you would have chosen.

Aim for a balance between technical skills — tools, methods, languages, certifications — which are the most sought after because the most filterable, and a few transferable skills, useful but unable on their own to make you stand out in a search.

The three pinned ones matter more than the other forty-seven

LinkedIn shows three at the top of the section; the rest are hidden behind a click few people make. Those three slots are where the real choice lies. They should match the role you are aiming for — not the one you hold, if the two differ.

Endorsements: useful, but not in the way you think

Endorsements from your connections lend credibility to a skill, all the more when they come from people in the same field. But thirty endorsements on an irrelevant skill are worth nothing, and a skill endorsed mainly by people outside your profession says mostly that you have a network — not that you are good.

Recommendations: the proof you do not write

Everything else on your profile is written by you. Recommendations are the only section where someone else vouches for you — and that is exactly what gives them weight. A recruiter torn between two profiles will go and read them.

Three to five well-targeted recommendations are enough. Beyond that, returns fall off quickly. Three precise texts from different roles — a manager, a peer, a client or partner — beat ten interchangeable pleasantries.

How to ask for one without awkwardness

The reason people do not ask is the fear of imposing. But what imposes is not the request: it is having to find something to write. Make the task easy and you will almost always get a yes.

• Recall the context: the project, the period, what you worked on together. The person does not necessarily have it all in mind.
• Say what would help you: « if you could mention the checkout redesign and the team coordination, that would be perfect ». You steer without dictating.
• Offer a draft if the person is very busy, making clear they can rewrite it entirely. Many will accept with relief.
• Ask at the right moment: just after a shared success, or at the end of a collaboration — not three years later, when memories have faded.

Reciprocity, without turning it into a trade

Writing a recommendation for someone unprompted is one of the most effective gestures in professional networking: it is rare, it is visible, and it naturally invites reciprocity. But write it for its own sake. « I will write you one if you write me one » produces two hollow texts nobody will believe.

The mistakes that cancel out the benefit

• Listing fifty skills with no hierarchy: the first three are the only ones really seen. Choosing them matters more than lengthening the list.
• Skills that match nothing in your background: a recruiter cross-checks. A skill nothing in your experience supports weakens the whole.
• Recommendations that are too general: « serious and pleasant professional » proves nothing. A text naming a specific project says more in two lines.
• Having none at all: on an otherwise complete profile, the total absence of recommendations eventually gets noticed.
• Letting them age: recommendations that stop six years ago tell the story of a career that stopped too.

In short

Treat your skills as a search index: pick them from the job ads that interest you, and above all look after the three pinned ones. Treat your recommendations as proof: three to five, specific, from different roles, obtained by making the task easy for whoever writes them. To see where you stand on both sections, run a free analysis of your profile.