Updated September 2, 2026
LinkedIn Skills: How to Choose, Order, and Pin Them
Your skills aren't just a list — they feed LinkedIn search and they're the first thing many recruiters scan. A focused, well-ordered set beats a wall of 40 generic ones.
How many skills to list
You can add up to 50, but you don't want to. A tight set of roughly 20–35 relevant skills reads as focused; a maxed-out list of loosely-related skills dilutes the signal and looks like padding.
Pin the right top three
LinkedIn lets you pin skills to the top of the section, and those are the ones shown most prominently. Pin the three that matter most for the role you're targeting — not whichever happen to be your most-endorsed.
Endorsements still matter
A skill with no endorsements carries far less weight in search than one that's endorsed. You don't need hundreds — even a handful helps a skill register. Ask a few colleagues who genuinely know your work; don't buy or trade endorsements.
Make your profile back up each skill
The strongest skills are the ones your headline, About, and experience already demonstrate. If a skill appears nowhere else in your profile, it reads as a claim; if it shows up in your accomplishments, it reads as proof.