LinkedIn Skills Assessment: Add Badges and Gain Trust Signals!

Your LinkedIn skills section is a great way to list down the things you’re great at.

But, almost everyone can claim to be great at any skill.

One way of adding trust signals to the skills that you’ve listed down is by getting endorsements, but how about if you want to add a little more to that?

Enter, LinkedIn skills assessments.

These are tests built by the LinkedIn community that you can take in 15 minutes.

And, they reward you with a badge as a trust signal.

Here’s how you get them.

What are LinkedIn Skills Assessment Tests?

LinkedIn skills assessment tests are mini questionnaires by LinkedIn that test your general knowledge regarding a skill.

If you pass them you get a special badge/icon next to the skill telling prospects and recruiters that according to LinkedIn you have proficiency in that skill.

So, why is this great for your profile?

First of all, it shows social proof. If you say you’re good with AngularJS and you don’t have any endorsements for it yet, getting a badge is enough to prove that you’re at least “LinkedIn-certified”.

Being that it shows proof, it also makes you highly attractive to both prospects and recruiters alike.

You end up “showing” them what your skills are instead of merely listing them down and “telling” them. This makes you look professional and someone who can live up to what you put on your profile.

For people looking for jobs, this is great as recruiters are actively looking for people with specific skills, the badges just make you look more appealing to them.

Lastly, it helps with profile completion.

Nothing tells people about attention to detail than a complete LinkedIn profile. Admittedly not a lot of people use LinkedIn skills assessments, but when visitors to your profile notice, it indicates that you’ve actually taken the time to get your skills verified.

What Tests Are Available?

These tests don’t cover every single skill on LinkedIn.

At most they cover three major categories:

• Business
• Technical
• Design

These include tests on major applications like the Adobe suite, programming languages, and the Mircosoft Office suite.

They also have outlier tests such as SEO, Quickbooks, and even WordPress.

These Tests Were Created By Experts But…

These LinkedIn skills assessment tests were created by experts and writers, and they are consistently peer-reviewed to make sure that they’re still relevant.

Out of the tests that we did, we felt like they did cover a couple of general and specific points regarding the subject.

However, there’s still a problem.

You can’t accurately gauge how good a person is with a particular topic after answering a barrage of only about 15 questions.

Plus, they claim that the time limits imposed will help deter people from looking up answers. However, that won’t really stop people who are determined.

The tests are also said to be adaptive, meaning they can sense if you’re “good” at a subject and adjust accordingly. We presume that if they sense you’re great at a particular skill, they’ll change it out to a more difficult test.

What do LinkedIn Skill Badges Look Like?

Linked skill badges appear on the skills section of your LinkedIn profile.

After you’re done with an assessment and you score a specific result (depending on the test) you’ll get an icon next to the skill on your profile.

This icon or badge means that you’ve been certified in that particular skill by LinkedIn’s testing system.

How to Take LinkedIn Skills Assessments

Head over to your LinkedIn feed and click on your profile thumbnail marked “Me”.

In the dropdown, you want to select “View Profile” which will take you to a visual editor where you can make edits to your profile.

Head over to the section marked “Skills & endorsements”, and click on “Take skill quiz”.

This should bring up a dialogue box with a list of LinkedIn skills assessment tests that you can take.

Given the current skills on your profile, the algorithm will automatically populate a recommended list of assessments that you can take.

However, this won’t stop you from looking for individual skills tests that you can take.

Once you’ve picked the assessment that you want to take, you will be taken to the details of the test.

Read that part thoroughly, you’ll now be ready to “Start” the test.

We did the Microsoft Word LinkedIn skills assessment test as an example – and we earned a badge! – it was pretty straightforward.

When you do earn a badge, you’ll have the option to display it in the skills section of your profile, and this is automatically turned on by default.

And, that’s about it.

In less than 15 minutes and a couple of clicks, you’ll be able to verify a skill that you are great at and get yourself a badge that you can proudly display on your profile.

Easy right?

How Can You Get a Badge?

In order to get a badge, you must score in the top 30 percent of people who have taken the exam.

Now, LinkedIn won’t tell you what the minimum score is to hit the top 30 percent, so you might score 90 percent of the answers correct but if the top 30 percent of takers score at least 94, you still won’t be eligible for a badge.

This also means that the top 30 in scoring differs depending on the subject matter you’re being tested for.

Can You Retake a LinkedIn Skills Assessment Test?

Yes, you can – within 6 months.

This is great if you don’t manage to get yourself a badge on the first try.

If you’re unsure about a particular topic, you can use the practice option first, then go for one test to try it out for real.

You can always repeat it so that’s a good thing.

Takeaways

Doing LinkedIn badges are not completely necessary.

A lot of people can do away without them.

But, they serve as excellent sources of social proof.

By adding a badge, you can easily tell people that you’re ready to defend your knowledge of a particular skill.

This can add a lot of leverage if you want to show prospects your skillset or if you’re looking to impress a recruiter.

We like it because it’s a trust signal.

You want to get people to trust you.

And, you need as many trust signals as you can get.