One skill you do not need on #LinkedIn

You may not have noticed this yet, or it may not have come to your profile yet, but it will soon. Among the other changes to your profile I spoke about in this blog, LinkedIn is grouping your skills on your profile.

You didn’t need to do anything; no skill required. LinkedIn did it for you.

But this change they made means you want to review your skills section and probably make some adjustments, and that is a decision you need to think through.

The skills category groups are:

• top skills (only 3 allowed and they are indicated by the blue push-pin)
• industry knowledge
• interpersonal skills
• languages (N/A for me)
• other skills

I am not aware of a way to rename these group headings. If I find out how, you know I will advise you here.

You can easily move a skill from one group to another by using your left muse button and holding it over the 4 small horizontal lines associated with the skill and dragging it up or down to the right grouping.

And you can reorder skills within a category grouping too.

PS You must have more than three skills listed in your Skills section for your skills to be categorized. Everyone must have more than 3 skills, and I urge you to  find a way to self-reflect and list at least 23!

I made a number of adjustments on mine. For example, upon reviewing the inserted graphic from my profile (above), I noticed my skill in social networking was better placed in “industry knowledge,” rather than in “other skills.” Simple change made.

You should review and move you skills around too.

Perception of your skill set is very important in our markets and you want to put your very best foot, or feet, forward. I am not sure a casual reader will look at “other skills” very readily, so think about the reader’s perception of your profile in this exercise.