LinkedIn is the online platform for all things that relate to your professional brand, and you want to use it to your best advantage to the fullest extent that you can. You need to have your profile completed. Each section that is pertinent to you should be optimized. Related: How To Ask For LinkedIn Recommendations One easy and fairly straightforward way to add credibility to your profile is to get LinkedIn endorsements for skills you have developed and honed over the course of your work history. There are several ways to do that, and I am going to mention three in particular, but before I get into the ways to receive endorsements, I would like to offer a caveat about how you choose the skills for which you want to be endorsed. LinkedIn offers you an opportunity to select from a multitude of skills and to choose up to 50 individual skills for which to be endorsed. It is far too easy to fall into the trap of selecting too many skills or picking skills in which you may have some limited proficiency. I want to offer a bit of advice here and suggest that you be selective (and a little restrained) when choosing which skills you want to be recognized for having. Realistically, you probably don’t need more than 20 discrete skills in your profile, and they should be clearly differentiated from one another. Be honest with yourself, and don’t select skills that are not in alignment with jobs you have had in the past. Don’t feel pressured to have 50 skills selected just because you can. Select those skills that you have and that you have demonstrated over the course of your career(s) or job(s) so that people who have worked with you or who know you relatively well can endorse you with a clear conscience. When offering endorsements for others, only endorse them for skills you know they have, and avoid offering endorsements for skills you don’t have first-hand knowledge of someone possessing. An example would be that on occasion, I receive endorsements for public speaking from individuals that I am sure have never heard me speak in public. I do have skill in public speaking, but it says something about the person who would endorse me for that skill when they have no first-hand experience of it, don’t you think? Be careful and offer your endorsements with a sense of integrity. Only endorse people that you know have the skills you are endorsing them for, and only ask for and accept endorsements for skills you possess. With that note of caution out of the way, let me offer that I think there are three easy and relatively painless ways to add endorsements to your LinkedIn profile.
