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LinkedIn pushes smarter endorsements

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 24 Oct 2016
The LinkedIn app will now show the top five skills on a person's profile most relevant to the viewer.
The LinkedIn app will now show the top five skills on a person's profile most relevant to the viewer.

The professional social network is redesigning its skills and endorsements section within its app to make it smarter and more relevant for both the viewer and profile owner.

The company first launched the section in 2012, and since then, more than 10 billion endorsements for skills have been shared by connections. Users can be endorsed by other users for skills such as leadership, Adobe Photoshop, or machine learning.

The goal of endorsements is to provide a way for connections to recognise other users' expertise.

"Delivering endorsements that provide even more value required a blend of research, new machine learning models and re-architecting the backend infrastructure that both serves and recommends new endorsements," says product manager Yolanda Yeh in a company blogpost.

Endorsements that matter most to the viewer will now be highlighted. For example, viewers will see endorsements made by mutual connections, colleagues and people who are knowledgeable about the skill.

Similarly, people asked to endorse other users will be asked about skills they are already proficient in. The company says this improved targeting will make the endorsements more relevant.

Users can now rank their top five skills they would like to be most prominent, depending on which job they are looking for.

The company says people with at least five skills listed on their profile receive up to 17 times more profile views, and that more than a third of hiring managers spend more than 60 seconds browsing this section.

The new feature has been rolled out globally within the LinkedIn app. Desktop will follow soon.

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