Best Skills to Add to Your LinkedIn Profile

The LinkedIn skills section looks deceptively simple: a list of things you know how to do. In practice, it is one of the more consequential parts of your profile because it affects how you appear in recruiter searches. Choosing the right skills, in the right order, does real work even when no one is actively looking at your profile.

How Does LinkedIn's Skills Section Work?

LinkedIn allows you to add up to 100 skills, but only a handful show without an extra click. Your About section can display up to five top skills that you choose, and the Skills section on your profile shows only its first two, with the rest behind Show all. Those are the skills a visitor sees at a glance, so which ones you put there matters more than the total.

Endorsements, where connections click to validate a skill, add a small layer of social proof. They are not worthless, but a skill with zero endorsements is still searchable and still visible. Do not over-index on accumulating endorsements at the expense of choosing the right skills in the first place.

How to Add Skills to Your LinkedIn Profile

You can add skills from your computer or the LinkedIn app, and the steps are almost the same on both.

1. Go to your profile and scroll to the Skills section. If you do not have one yet, select Add section under your name, then Core, then Add skills.
2. Select the plus icon, start typing a skill, and pick the matching suggestion from the dropdown. Pick LinkedIn's suggestion rather than typing your own wording, so your skill uses the platform's standard name.
3. If LinkedIn asks which of your roles used the skill, tick them, then save.
4. To change the order, select Show all at the bottom of the Skills section, then the three-dot menu, then Reorder, and move the skills you want seen first to the top.
5. To choose your top skills, select the pencil icon on your About section, scroll down to Skills and use Add skill. You can pick up to five and drag them into order, and they also appear in your Skills section.

LinkedIn changes its menus often, so if a label looks different on your screen, look for the plus or pencil icon in the Skills section.

How Many Skills Per Job on LinkedIn?

Each role in your Experience section can carry its own skills. Open the role, select Edit, and add skills in the Skills field. Those skills also appear in your main Skills section and count towards your overall limit of 100.

Use each role's skills to tell the story of that job rather than repeating the same list everywhere. Your current role gets the skills you want to be found for, and an older role gets the skills you built there, which shows a recruiter how your career developed. If you used the same tool in three jobs, tag it in all three, because that repetition shows depth.

What Types of Skills Should You Add?

The most effective LinkedIn skill lists are a mix of hard skills and tools that recruiters in your field actually search for. If you work in marketing, terms like "SEO," "Google Analytics," "content strategy," and "paid social" are concrete and searchable. If you work in finance, "financial modelling," "FP and A," "Excel," and "variance analysis" cover the bases. If you work in software development, specific languages, frameworks, and methodologies ("Python," "React," "Agile," "CI/CD") are far more useful than generic labels.

Soft skills like "leadership," "communication," and "problem-solving" are largely invisible in recruiter searches and add little value in the skills section specifically. These qualities matter, but they belong in your About section and in your job descriptions, where they can be demonstrated through examples. In the skills list, they take up slots that could be occupied by searchable technical terms.

How Do You Choose Your Top LinkedIn Skills?

Your top skills, and the first ones in your Skills section, should be the ones most closely aligned with the role or roles you are targeting. Think about what a recruiter searching for someone like you would type into LinkedIn's search bar. If you are a data analyst targeting senior individual contributor roles, your top skills might include "SQL," "Python," and "data visualisation." If you are a project manager, they might include "stakeholder management," "Agile," and "JIRA." The test is simple: would a recruiter searching for your target role include these terms?

You control the order in both places. In the About editor, drag your top skills into the order you want. In the Skills section, select Show all, open the three-dot menu, choose Reorder and move skills to the positions you want.

How Many Skills Should You Add in Total?

LinkedIn allows up to 100 skills, but filling every slot is not the goal. A list of 25 to 40 skills that you can talk about in an interview is more useful than 100 that include things you touched once or that are too vague to search on. That range is our advice, not a LinkedIn rule: enough to cover your tools, methods and functional areas, and few enough that the skills at the top of the list carry the message.

If you are early in your career, 15 to 20 honest skills is fine. If you have fifteen years behind you, resist listing everything, and cut anything you would not want to be asked about.

Which Skills Should You Avoid Adding?

A few types of skills consistently take up space without doing much work. "Microsoft Office" is expected of almost every professional in 2026 and adds nothing unless you are specifically targeting roles where advanced Excel or PowerPoint is a genuine differentiator. In that case, be specific: "Excel" or "financial modelling in Excel" is more useful than "Microsoft Office Suite." Extremely vague soft skills like "teamwork," "time management," and "attention to detail" are almost never searched for by recruiters and take up valuable slots. Generic industry labels like "business development" or "marketing" without more specific supporting terms are too broad to aid search placement meaningfully.

List of LinkedIn Skills by Field

These are examples of specific, searchable skill names. Pick the ones you can back up with real work, and swap in the exact terms you see in your target job descriptions.

Technology and Data

• Python, SQL, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java
• React, Node.js, Django
• AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes
• Machine Learning, Data Visualisation, Tableau, Power BI
• Agile, CI/CD, API Design, Test Automation

Marketing and Communications

• SEO, Content Strategy, Email Marketing, Marketing Automation
• Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta Ads, HubSpot
• Copywriting, Brand Strategy, Social Media Marketing

Finance and Accounting

• Financial Modelling, Budgeting and Forecasting, Variance Analysis
• IFRS, Management Accounting, Audit
• Excel, SAP, Bloomberg Terminal, QuickBooks

Sales and Customer Success

• B2B Sales, Account Management, Lead Generation, Negotiation
• Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Outreach
• Customer Retention, Onboarding, Churn Reduction

Operations, Project and Product Management

• Project Management, Stakeholder Management, Roadmapping
• PMP, PRINCE2, OKRs, Lean Six Sigma
• Jira, Asana, Notion, Supply Chain Management

HR and Recruitment

• Talent Acquisition, Employee Relations, Onboarding
• Workday, BambooHR, Applicant Tracking Systems
• Performance Management, Compensation and Benefits

Design and Creative

• Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, UX Research, Prototyping
• Brand Identity, Motion Graphics, Video Editing

Skills Worth Adding in Any Field

A small number of broader skills still earn a place when you pair them with specifics: Project Management, Data Analysis, Public Speaking, Stakeholder Management, Coaching. Skip the vague ones such as Teamwork or Hard Working, which tell a recruiter nothing they can search on.

What Are Some Role-Specific Skill Examples?

For tech roles, prioritise specific languages and frameworks over broad categories: "Python" over "programming," "AWS" over "cloud," "TypeScript" over "JavaScript frameworks." For marketing roles, platform-specific skills perform better than generic ones: "Meta Ads," "HubSpot," "Google Search Console," rather than "digital marketing" alone. For finance roles, tool and methodology specificity matters: "DCF modelling," "Bloomberg Terminal," "IFRS," rather than "financial analysis." For operations and project management, certifications and tools help: "PMP," "PRINCE2," "Asana," "OKRs." In every field, the heuristic is the same: if a recruiter could search for this exact term and expect to find someone with your background, it belongs on your list.

Why Should You Review Your Skills Periodically?

Your skills list should evolve as your role and target change. If you have moved into management, skills that reflect your current focus should move to the top, even if technical skills from an earlier phase of your career remain on the list further down. If you are pivoting into a new area, add skills from that domain deliberately and move them toward the top before you start applying, so that your profile reflects the direction you are heading rather than only where you have been.

Skills work best alongside the rest of your profile. See How to Write Your LinkedIn About Section for where to show the soft skills this list leaves out, How to Write a LinkedIn Summary, How to Ask for LinkedIn Recommendations to get your pinned skills endorsed, and LinkedIn Headline Formula: How to Write One That Gets Found by Recruiters.