LinkedIn Users Can Now Showcase Skill Assessments

• LinkedIn users can now complete a short quiz to verify their proficiency with certain skills.
• Officials estimate that users are 30% more likely to get hired if they complete a LinkedIn Skill Assessment.
• With Skill Assessments, employers can more easily find potential quality hires.

Job hunters looking for an edge over their competition may want to pay more attention to their LinkedIn profiles. The job-oriented social media platform has announced a new feature that could highlight your skill set.

Starting today, LinkedIn Skill Assessments will give users the chance to show off their proficiency with various important tools in today’s workplace. Recent research shows that 69% of professionals believe “verified skills are more important than college education.” Researchers also found that 76% said they felt being able to “verify skills would help them stand out amongst other candidates.”

With today’s launch, the company said the free, short-form standardized tests are a way to help candidates put their best foot forward to recruiters and employers.

“Each Skill Assessment, whether it’s Adobe Photoshop to showcase your design skills or Java to land a developer role, is constructed through a rigorous content creation and review process in partnership with LinkedIn Learning industry and subject matter experts,” said John Jersin, LinkedIn’s vice president of product management.

Today’s launch features assessments in 33 skill sets, including C++ for coders and Photoshop for designers. The company says it plans to roll out more “in-demand assessments” in the coming weeks. [Interested in learning more about how to use LinkedIn for business? Check out this article.]

This is the full list of Skill Assessments:

1. Adobe Acrobat
2. Angular
3. AWS
4. Bash
5. C
6. C#
7. C++
8. CSS
9. GIT
10. Hadoop
11. HTML
12. Java
13. JavaScript
14. jQuery
15. JSON
16. Maven
17. MongoDB
18. MS Excel
19. MS PowerPoint
20. MS Project
21. MS SharePoint
22. MS Visio
23. Node.js
24. Objective-C
25. PHP
26. Python
27. QuickBooks
28. Ruby
29. Ruby on Rails
30. Scala
31. Swift
32. WordPress
33. XML

Learning and lauding your skills

Regardless of the subject matter, LinkedIn Skill Assessments will be available to everyone (though the feature is not yet available to all LinkedIn members). You can take assessments on your phone, but the company recommends using a laptop.

To take advantage of the new feature, the company said, users should simply look at the skills section of their profile to select an assessment to take. Results are kept private, but those who end up in the 70th percentile or higher will be able to add a “verified skill” badge to their page.

LinkedIn will only allow you to perform these assessments for the skills you’ve added to your profile. The tests include 15 to 20 multiple-choice questions, each testing at least one concept or subskill. The questions will be timed and must be completed in one sitting.

Skill Assessments are created by LinkedIn Learning community members who have experience generating exam content. The company is leaning on multiple writers, instructors, authors and peer reviewers. LinkedIn says the scoring is done by “computer-based methodology called adaptive testing.” Your percentile is determined by comparing scores against a benchmark the company created.

Here’s a sample question for JavaScript:

What is the HTTP verb to request the contents of an existing resource?

1. GET
2. POST
3. PATCH
4. DELETE

For those who don’t pass or just want to brush up on their skills, LinkedIn said it will unlock relevant LinkedIn Learning courses for a limited time after you complete an assessment.

“This means you can continue to brush up on the skills that you’re interested in to feel more confident and motivated, as well as to set yourself up for the future when it’s time to look for your next opportunity,” Jersin wrote. [Looking for more tips on how to get a job on LinkedIn? Check out this article.]

Embarrassed by your score? No worries. You can delete your scores, but that means you won’t be able to retrieve them later. You will also be unable to retake the same assessment for at least three months.

Connecting employers with candidates

With LinkedIn Skill Assessments now live, users who take advantage of the new feature could find themselves becoming more popular among recruiters and hiring managers. Company reps said the feature will help members “build a stronger profile” that helps them stand out from the pack.

According to LinkedIn’s preliminary tests of the assessments, profiles that showed a proficiency in a particular skill showed a “significant improvement (~30%) in the likelihood to get hired.” Those findings jive with data from LinkedIn that shows “87% of employers agreed that an easy way to verify candidate skills would save them time.”

Through Skill Assessments, the company said, recruiters and hiring managers will be able to streamline the search for candidates. For one thing, employers won’t have to set up their own custom assessments to prove a candidate’s abilities. Instead, they’ll be able to find out at a glance who passed a LinkedIn Skill Assessment and go from there.

LinkedIn said it will make candidates who have completed a Skill Assessment more likely to show up in searches. Additionally, anyone who passes an assessment for an in-demand skill will receive relevant job recommendations as soon as they’re available.

Recruiters will also be able to send applicants assessments to complete. It won’t be mandatory, but it will help candidates stand out. If an applicant takes an assessment but does not pass, that is not visible to the recruiter.

LinkedIn Intelligent Hiring Experience

Earlier this year, LinkedIn released other enhancements for recruiters and employers. The company combined the Jobs, Recruiter and Pipeline Builder tools into one platform called the Intelligent Hiring Experience.

Recruiters can now manage all potential candidates from the Talent Pool tab. Over time, the platform will learn the types of candidates you are seeking based on which people you save, hide and send InMessages to. Then it will begin recommending candidates for your job openings.

Andrew Martins is an award-winning journalist with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Ramapo College of New Jersey. Before joining Business.com and Business News Daily, he wrote for a regional publication and served as the managing editor for six weekly papers that spanned four counties. Currently, he is responsible for reviewing tax software and online fax services. He is a New Jersey native and a first-generation Portuguese American, and he has a penchant for the nerdy.