Lesson Introduction
Your Skills section should make it easier for someone to understand what you are genuinely good at. The goal is not to fill every available slot. It is to choose skills that support the work you do now, the work you want to be known for, and the opportunities you want LinkedIn® to help you find.
LinkedIn® currently allows up to 100 skills in the Skills section. Treat that as a limit, not a target. This lesson will help you build a focused shortlist before you start adding or reorganizing skills.
Start With What You Want Your Profile to Support
Before choosing skills, decide what your LinkedIn® profile needs to support. Your answer should influence which skills deserve the most attention.
- Your current role – the skills you use regularly and are expected to demonstrate.
- Your next move – the skills connected to the roles, projects or responsibilities you want next.
- Your clients or customers – the capabilities people need to understand before they trust you with work.
- Your professional reputation – the subjects and capabilities you want people to associate with your name.
A skill is more useful when it reinforces the professional story already being told by your headline, About section and Experience section.
A Simple Four-Part Test
Before a skill earns a place on your shortlist, put it through four tests:
- Relevant – does it support the work you do or want to do?
- Specific – does the wording tell someone something useful about your capability?
- Current – is it still part of your professional life?
- Supported – could you point to experience, education, projects, results or other evidence that backs it up?
If a skill fails two or more of these tests, it probably does not deserve priority on your profile.
Where to Find Good Skill Ideas
You do not have to invent your Skills list from memory. Build a candidate list from places that already describe your work:
- your current and previous Experience entries
- projects you have delivered
- services you provide
- job descriptions for roles you hold or want
- client briefs and recurring client requests
- tools, systems and methods you use regularly
- professional qualifications and education
- the profiles of credible people doing similar work
LinkedIn® can also suggest skills based on information already on your profile. Suggestions can be useful prompts, but you should still decide whether each skill passes the four-part test above.
My Recommendation: Start With 15 to 25 Skills
LinkedIn® gives you room for far more than you need for a first pass. I recommend starting with 15 to 25 skills that you can confidently defend.
That gives you enough breadth to represent your work without turning the exercise into a long inventory of everything you have ever done. You can add, remove and reorganize skills later as your work changes.
In the lessons that follow, we will separate these into useful groups – industry knowledge, industry skills, interpersonal skills, tools and technologies, and other relevant skills – then decide which deserve the strongest positions.
What to Leave Out
Be selective. A longer list is not automatically a stronger list.
- Skills you no longer use – remove legacy capabilities that no longer represent your work.
- Skills added only because they sound impressive – if you cannot support them, they weaken credibility.
- Near-duplicates – choose the clearest term rather than filling the list with slightly different versions of the same capability.
- Very broad terms – use a more precise skill when it better explains what you can actually do.
- Every tool you have ever opened – prioritize tools you genuinely use and would be comfortable discussing professionally.
Your Action Before the Next Lesson
Create a working shortlist of 15 to 25 skills. Do not worry about the final order yet.
For each skill, ask:
- Is this relevant to where I am now or where I am going?
- Would another professional understand what this skill means?
- Do I still use it?
- Can I support it with real experience or evidence?
Keep the skills that pass. Mark any you are unsure about for review. In the next lesson, we will make sure your Skills section is active and ready for the list you have created.
