Your LinkedIn Top Skills help reinforce the professional story you are telling in your headline, About section and experience history. For leaders, professionals in transition and people preparing for board, advisory or consulting opportunities, this is particularly useful. The Top skills you choose for your About section should make it easier for others to understand the contribution you bring.

LinkedIn allows you to select skills for your profile and reorder them, and the strongest profiles do not leave those skills sitting on their own. They bring the five most relevant capabilities forward into the About section, where readers can see them quickly and in context.

Start with the skills you most want to be known for

Choose skills that reflect the work you do now, the experience you have built and the direction you want your profile to support.

For a senior leader, this may include strategy, transformation, stakeholder engagement, risk, workforce capability, commercial leadership or sector expertise.

For someone preparing for a board or advisory role, it may include governance, financial oversight, strategic planning, leadership, regulation or industry knowledge.

For a professional in career transition, it may include transferable strengths that connect past experience with future opportunities.

The aim is not to list every capability you have developed. It is to identify the few areas that best support your current positioning.

Use your About section to make those skills visible

Your About section is one of the first places people look when they want to understand your professional focus.

Rather than simply writing a list of skills, weave your Top Skills into a short opening paragraph that explains the work you do and the value you bring.

For example:

I work with organisations navigating growth, change and complex stakeholder environments. My experience spans strategic planning, leadership development, workforce capability and client relationship management.

Or:

With a background in commercial leadership and financial services, I bring experience across strategy, transformation, governance, risk and senior stakeholder engagement.

This approach gives your skills meaning. It shows how they sit within your wider professional story rather than presenting them as isolated keywords.

Match your skills to the opportunities you want to attract

Your Top Skills should align with the roles, projects or conversations you want LinkedIn to support.

A useful question is:

Would these skills make sense to the people I most want to connect with?

For example:

• an executive seeking broader leadership opportunities may prioritise strategy, transformation, people leadership and stakeholder engagement

• a consultant may highlight the areas clients engage them for

• a board aspirant may bring forward governance, risk, financial oversight, strategic planning and sector expertise

• a job seeker may focus on the transferable strengths most relevant to their next role

The more closely your Top Skills align with your current direction, the easier it becomes for others to understand where you fit.

Make sure the rest of your profile supports them

Once you have identified your strongest skills, look for ways to reinforce them throughout the profile.

Your experience section should show where and how you have used them. Your About section should explain the professional context behind them. Your Featured section, recommendations, qualifications and recent activity can all provide additional evidence.

For example, someone who lists “change management” as a Top Skill should be able to point to significant transformation work in their experience history. Someone who highlights “board governance” should include relevant committee, advisory, governance or leadership experience where appropriate.

This creates a more credible and consistent profile.

Reorder your skills with intention

LinkedIn allows you to reorder skills, so place the most relevant ones first.

This is particularly important when your career has evolved. Skills from earlier roles may still be valuable, but they should not overshadow the expertise you most want to be known for now.

A quick review every six to twelve months is usually enough to keep this section useful. Update it when your role changes, you gain new experience, complete relevant study or begin exploring a new professional direction.

Use endorsements as supporting evidence

Endorsements can help reinforce the skills you are already known for, particularly when they come from people who have worked closely with you.

They are not the centrepiece of a strong LinkedIn profile. The clearer priority is choosing skills that genuinely reflect your work, then ensuring the rest of your profile supports them.

When your Top Skills, About section and experience history all point in the same direction, your profile becomes easier to understand and more useful for the opportunities ahead.