So you want a new job but your LinkedIn profile looks a little bare. The first step is to update your work experience to highlight your skills. But what happens if your skills endorsements do not reflect your work experience? That sends the wrong message to potential employers. Let me show you how to boost your LinkedIn Skills Endorsements by 100% or more in one day!

The LinkedIn Skills Endorsement feature is an easy way to show that your skill set matches your experience. The question is though, how do I get endorsed? The answer is simple: Just Ask.

The idea is to choose 3-5 skills that you would like to be endorsed for and ask your connections to endorse you for these. In turn you offer to endorse them for the skills they prefer. Write a very simple message and send it to your connections you feel comfortable asking for an endorsement. That's it.

Here is the message I sent:

Hi There,

What skills do you want to be endorsed for? I’m going through my network endorsing people for what skills they want highlighted. It helps to improve your profile, so I figure it makes sense for everyone to help each other. ????

When you have a moment, could you in turn endorse my profile for ONLY these 4 skills:

• Digital marketing
• Marketing Automation
• Digital strategy
• Pardot

I’m trying to boost these to the top. Let me know what you need to be endorsed for.

Thanks,

Dave

www.linkedin.com/in/daveadendorff/

It took me about 30 minutes to send the message manually through LinkedIn to 85 of my connections. If you have a professional account, there are faster options available to you. I had a success rate of about 25% of people replying right away who were keen to assist (and be assisted).

It is important to return the favour (or at least offer to). I made sure to endorse everybody that replied immediately and also let them know that I did. You have to give in order to receive. At about lunch time my LinkedIn Skills Endorsements looked completely different.

Here are my endorsements before and after:

LinkedIn Skills Endorsements Before

LinkedIn Skills Endorsements after

So what were the results?

Let's look at the 4 skills I listed in my message:

Wow! That's more like it. I also found that people won't necessarily stick to the skills you listed. They will often endorse you for additional skills they think you are good at. This method has a secondary benefit. It opens a dialogue with your connections and you achieve the #1 goal of LinkedIn, you network with your network! When was the last time you did that?

So there you have it. Try it and let me know what results you get.