How LinkedIn Endorsements Actually Work — and How to Get the "Highly Skilled" Designation
LinkedIn endorsements are one of the most misunderstood features on the platform. Most people treat them as a passive social nicety — something that shows up in your notifications, gets a quick thank-you click, and then sits on your profile doing nothing in particular. You endorse a colleague for "Project Management." They endorse you back for "Digital Marketing." Everyone moves on.
But endorsements, when understood correctly and built deliberately, are doing more work on your LinkedIn profile than most people realize. They influence how LinkedIn's search algorithm surfaces your profile. They contribute to the "People Also Viewed" and "Skills" sections that shape how recruiters, prospective clients, and business partners evaluate you at a glance. And — most visibly — they are directly connected to one of the more coveted profile distinctions LinkedIn awards: the "Highly Skilled" designation that appears on specific skills in your profile when you've earned it.
This blog explains how endorsements actually function, what the "Highly Skilled" label means and how LinkedIn decides who gets it, and what a deliberate endorsement strategy looks like for professionals and businesses that want to use LinkedIn as a genuine growth channel.
What LinkedIn Endorsements Actually Are — and What They're Not
An endorsement is a one-click validation from a LinkedIn connection that confirms you have a specific skill listed on your profile. It requires almost no effort from the person endorsing you — LinkedIn often prompts users to endorse connections with suggested skills when they visit a profile or engage with content, and a single click is all it takes.
Because the barrier is so low, endorsements are sometimes dismissed as meaningless. The reasoning goes: if anyone can endorse anyone for anything with one click and no demonstrated knowledge of the person's actual competence, what does the endorsement actually prove?
The answer is that individual endorsements prove relatively little on their own. What matters is the pattern — the volume, the source quality, and the specificity of the endorsements you accumulate over time. LinkedIn's algorithm is not evaluating whether any single endorser is qualified to judge your competence. It is evaluating whether a large number of professional connections, across a range of relationship types, have collectively chosen to associate you with a specific skill. That collective signal, aggregated at scale, carries genuine weight in how LinkedIn surfaces your profile and how it categorizes your expertise.
Think of it less like a letter of recommendation and more like a vote count. No single vote proves you're the most qualified candidate. But a large, consistent vote count across your professional network is a meaningful signal — one that LinkedIn's algorithm takes seriously when deciding how to rank profiles in search results and how to label skills in the "endorsed" and "highly skilled" system.
How Endorsements Influence LinkedIn's Algorithm
LinkedIn's search algorithm — the system that decides which profiles to surface when a recruiter searches "content marketing strategist" or a prospective client searches "financial advisor Philadelphia" — uses endorsement data as one of several ranking signals.
Specifically, LinkedIn's algorithm considers:
Which skills you have listed. Skills that are listed on your profile but have zero endorsements carry less algorithmic weight than skills with substantial endorsement counts. The act of listing a skill is necessary but not sufficient — endorsements are what give listed skills their search ranking power.
How many endorsements each skill has. More endorsements for a specific skill improve your profile's relevance signal for searches involving that skill. There is no publicly disclosed threshold at which this effect plateaus, but the general pattern is clear: skills with 10 endorsements rank better than skills with 2, and skills with 50 rank better than skills with 10.
Who is endorsing you. LinkedIn's algorithm assigns greater weight to endorsements from connections who are themselves endorsed or recognized as skilled in the relevant area. An endorsement for "SEO" from someone who has 40 endorsements for SEO themselves carries more algorithmic weight than an endorsement for "SEO" from someone who has no SEO skills on their profile. This is an important nuance that most people miss: not all endorsements are equal, and the source quality of your endorsements matters alongside the volume.
Whether your endorsements match your headline and about section. LinkedIn's algorithm evaluates profile coherence — whether your stated expertise, your skills, and your endorsement pattern tell a consistent story. A profile where the top endorsed skills align closely with the headline, about section, and experience descriptions is seen as more authoritative on those topics than a profile where the endorsements feel random or disconnected from the stated professional identity.
This means that a deliberate endorsement strategy isn't just about accumulating numbers. It's about building a coherent signal — one that tells LinkedIn's algorithm, and the humans reading your profile, a consistent and credible story about what you're genuinely good at.
What the "Highly Skilled" Designation Actually Means
The "Highly Skilled" label is LinkedIn's way of surfacing exceptional endorsement signals in a visible, profile-level designation. When LinkedIn awards this label to a skill on your profile, it appears directly beneath the skill name — a small but meaningful visual cue that this is not just a skill you've listed, but one that your professional network has validated at scale.
LinkedIn has not publicly documented the precise algorithm behind the "Highly Skilled" designation, but based on what is known about the platform's endorsement system, several factors consistently appear to be involved:
Endorsement volume for the specific skill. The "Highly Skilled" designation is not awarded to skills with a handful of endorsements. The threshold appears to be meaningful — dozens to hundreds of endorsements depending on the category and the competitive landscape for that skill on LinkedIn. Skills in highly competitive professional categories (leadership, marketing, project management) appear to require more endorsements to earn the designation than skills in more specialized categories.
The professional authority of your endorsers. As noted, LinkedIn weights endorsements from recognized practitioners more heavily than endorsements from people with no demonstrated connection to the skill. Earning the "Highly Skilled" designation likely requires not just volume but a reasonable proportion of quality endorsements — validations from people who are themselves recognized in the relevant area.
Your overall profile strength and completeness. LinkedIn's designation system appears to consider the broader context of your profile. A complete, active profile with consistent skills, experience, and activity is more likely to have its endorsement signals recognized at the designation level than a sparse or inconsistent profile with the same endorsement count.
Consistency over time. Endorsements that have accumulated gradually over months and years appear to carry more weight than large volumes of endorsements received in a short period. This makes intuitive sense from a signal-quality standpoint — a skill that has been consistently endorsed by your growing professional network over three years is a more credible signal than 50 endorsements that appeared in the same week.
The "Highly Skilled" designation is not something you can purchase, manufacture through shortcuts, or guarantee through any specific action. It is awarded by LinkedIn's algorithm based on the accumulated signal of your endorsement profile — which means earning it is a product of deliberate, sustained work over time.
The Endorsement Gap: Why Most Professionals Are Leaving Signal on the Table
Most LinkedIn users have a skills section that looks like this: fifteen or twenty skills listed, two or three with double-digit endorsement counts, the rest with single digits or zero, and no particular strategy behind any of it.
This is the default state of most LinkedIn profiles, and it represents a significant missed opportunity — both algorithmically and perceptually.
Algorithmically, a skills section with thin endorsement counts is a weak signal. It's not actively hurting your profile in most cases, but it's not helping it either. The profiles that surface in LinkedIn search results ahead of yours for shared keywords are often profiles with stronger, more consistent endorsement signals on the skills that matter most for that search.
Perceptually, a skills section with low endorsement counts tells a story about your professional network that may not reflect reality. If you have been a practicing digital marketer for eight years and your "SEO" skill has 4 endorsements, the profile-level message is that your network doesn't particularly associate you with SEO — even if the reality is that you're excellent at it and have simply never thought to ask for endorsements.
The endorsement gap exists because most professionals treat endorsements as something that happens to them rather than something they actively build. They wait for LinkedIn's automated prompts to generate endorsements from connections who click through without much thought, rather than making deliberate, specific requests that generate higher-quality endorsements from more strategically valuable connections.
Closing the gap requires treating your endorsement profile as an active, manageable asset — one that you can build intentionally over time with the same deliberateness you bring to any other professional development investment.
The Deliberate Endorsement Strategy: How to Build It
Here is what a deliberate endorsement strategy actually looks like — not a shortcut or a hack, but a sustainable, credibility-preserving approach to building the endorsement signal that earns profile visibility and, over time, the "Highly Skilled" designation.
Step 1: Curate your skills list before you build endorsements
Before you focus on accumulating endorsements, make sure your skills list is telling the right story. LinkedIn allows up to 50 skills, but quantity is not the goal — coherence is. Your top three to five skills should be the ones most central to your professional identity and the outcomes you want LinkedIn to drive for you. If you want to be found by clients looking for a content strategist, "Content Strategy" should be in your top skills. If you want to be recruited for marketing leadership roles, "Marketing Strategy" and "Team Leadership" should be prominent.
Skills that don't support your core professional narrative dilute your signal. Skills that are too generic ("Microsoft Office," "Communication") carry little algorithmic weight in most professional contexts. Audit your list. Remove the skills that don't serve your goals. Prioritize the ones that do.
Step 2: Endorse others first, specifically and genuinely
The most effective way to earn endorsements is to give them — but not generically. When you endorse someone for a specific skill that you have genuinely observed in your professional interaction with them, two things happen: you add a quality signal to their profile, and you create a natural, non-awkward context for a reciprocal endorsement.
The key is specificity. Don't endorse a colleague for ten skills at once using LinkedIn's automated suggestions. Choose the one or two skills where you have genuine firsthand knowledge of their competence, go to their profile directly, and endorse those specific skills. This is meaningful to the recipient in a way that a batch of automated endorsements isn't, and it creates a genuine basis for reciprocity.
Step 3: Make direct, specific requests to your strongest connections
The most valuable endorsements come from direct, specific requests to connections who have firsthand knowledge of the skill in question. These are the endorsements that carry the most algorithmic weight — coming from people who can credibly vouch for your competence in a specific area — and they are the endorsements least likely to arrive without being asked for.
The request doesn't need to be elaborate. A direct message saying "I've been focusing on building my LinkedIn presence and I'm working to strengthen my endorsements for [specific skill]. Given our work together on [project or context], would you be willing to endorse me for that? I'm happy to return the favor for any skills you're focusing on" is direct, transparent, and easy to say yes to.
Make these requests to people who know your work specifically — not to your entire network indiscriminately. The quality of the source matters alongside the volume of the endorsement, and an endorsement from someone who genuinely knows your work is more valuable than one from a peripheral connection who clicked through a LinkedIn prompt.
Step 4: Activate your alumni and former colleague networks
Former colleagues, former managers, former direct reports, and alumni connections are often the most underutilized endorsement sources. These are people who knew your work well at a specific point in time, have enough distance from the day-to-day relationship to feel comfortable with a direct request, and are often happy to support a former colleague's professional development.
Reach out to former colleagues specifically around the skills that were most relevant to your shared work. A former manager endorsing you for a skill they directly observed is a high-quality signal — both algorithmically and in terms of how the endorsement looks to anyone reading your profile.
Step 5: Create content that prompts organic endorsement activity
Publishing content on LinkedIn that demonstrates expertise in your target skills creates a passive endorsement-generation mechanism. When your connections read a post that shows your depth of knowledge in a specific area, some of them will visit your profile — and LinkedIn often prompts profile visitors to endorse the skills most relevant to what they saw in the content.
This works because the endorsement is contextual and motivated: the person endorsing you just read something that demonstrated your competence, so the endorsement reflects a genuine (if light-touch) validation rather than a random automated prompt. Over time, a consistent content strategy creates a steady stream of organic endorsement activity from people who are engaging with your expertise firsthand.
Step 6: Maintain momentum without gaming the system
LinkedIn's algorithm appears to value consistency over bursts. A steady pace of new endorsements arriving over months is a stronger signal than a large volume arriving in a short period. This means endorsement-building should be an ongoing practice — something you do a little bit consistently — rather than a campaign you run for a month and then stop.
It also means avoiding shortcuts that damage credibility. Endorsement rings — where groups of strangers endorse each other for skills they have no basis to vouch for — are detectable by LinkedIn's algorithm, which weights endorsement quality alongside volume. Endorsements from connections who have no demonstrated connection to the skill, arriving in patterns that suggest coordination rather than organic professional interaction, carry less algorithmic weight and risk profile credibility with human readers.
Build real endorsements from real connections at a sustainable pace. That's the strategy that earns the "Highly Skilled" designation and builds a profile that holds its signal over time.
Why This Matters for Businesses, Not Just Individuals
Everything discussed so far applies primarily to personal LinkedIn profiles — the profiles of individuals building their professional presence on the platform. But the strategic logic extends to businesses in important ways.
The employees of your business are your most powerful LinkedIn asset. When your team members have strong personal profiles — with well-curated skills sections, substantial endorsement counts, and active professional networks — they extend your company's LinkedIn reach in ways that a company page alone cannot replicate.
A digital marketing agency whose team members collectively have "Highly Skilled" designations in SEO, Content Strategy, and Paid Media looks very different — both algorithmically and perceptually — than an agency whose team members have thin, unendorsed skills sections. When a prospective client researches the agency, they look at the people, not just the page. The credibility signals on individual profiles reflect on the business.
For B2B companies in particular, where sales cycles are long and trust-building is essential, the LinkedIn profiles of client-facing team members are a significant part of the sales and business development process. Building those profiles deliberately — including the endorsement dimension — is a business development investment, not just a personal professional development activity.
This is one of the reasons that a LinkedIn strategy worth having is never just a company page strategy. It's a strategy that integrates company page growth, executive personal profile development, employee advocacy, and the endorsement and skills signals that make individual profiles credible and visible in LinkedIn search.
The Bottom Line
LinkedIn endorsements are not meaningless social niceties. They are algorithmic signals that influence how your profile ranks in search, how LinkedIn categorizes your expertise, and — when built deliberately at sufficient volume and quality — whether your profile earns the "Highly Skilled" designation that marks your top skills as validated at scale by your professional network.
Most professionals treat endorsements as something that happens passively, which is why most profiles have thin endorsement counts that tell an incomplete story about the professional's actual competence. The professionals and businesses that treat endorsements as a manageable, buildable asset — through strategic giving, direct requesting, alumni activation, and content-driven organic activity — build profiles that surface more often in search, convert more profile visitors into conversations, and reflect the professional credibility they've actually earned.
The "Highly Skilled" designation is not a shortcut. It's a milestone that reflects sustained, deliberate effort to build a credible endorsement signal over time. But it's a milestone that is genuinely achievable for anyone willing to approach it with the same seriousness they bring to any other professional development goal.
Start with your top five skills. Curate them to reflect your core professional identity. Build endorsements from the connections who know your work best. Publish content that demonstrates the expertise behind the skills. Do it consistently, not in bursts.
The designation will follow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do endorsements from people outside my industry count, or only from people in the same field?
All endorsements count algorithmically to some degree, but LinkedIn weights endorsements from connections who are themselves recognized in the relevant skill area more heavily than endorsements from people with no demonstrated connection to that skill. An endorsement for "Financial Planning" from a colleague who is a financial planner carries more weight than the same endorsement from a connection who works in retail management. That said, don't discount endorsements from outside your industry entirely — volume still matters, and a diverse endorsement base that includes people from different professional contexts can actually strengthen your signal by demonstrating breadth of recognition.
How many endorsements do I need for the "Highly Skilled" designation?
LinkedIn has not publicly disclosed the exact threshold, and it appears to vary by skill category and competitive landscape. Based on observation across many profiles, skills with fewer than 25 to 30 endorsements rarely earn the designation, while skills with 50 or more are more commonly recognized. In highly competitive categories like "Leadership" or "Marketing," the threshold may be higher because more profiles are competing for recognition in those areas. The practical answer is: focus on consistent growth rather than a specific number, and the designation will follow when your signal is strong enough.
Is there a way to see how my endorsement counts compare to competitors or others in my field?
Not directly — LinkedIn doesn't provide a competitive endorsement ranking. But you can manually review profiles of competitors or peers in your field to get a sense of where your endorsement counts stand relative to theirs. If you're in a professional service category and your top competitors have 80 endorsements for a skill that you have 12 endorsements for, that's a meaningful gap worth closing.
Can I remove endorsements I don't want on my profile?
Yes. You can manage your endorsements in the Skills section of your profile — including hiding specific endorsements or removing skills from your profile entirely. This matters because a skill with a large number of endorsements for something that doesn't reflect your current professional focus can dilute your signal. If you were endorsed heavily for a skill that's no longer central to your work, hiding those endorsements or removing the skill from your top skills can help your current expertise come through more clearly.
Should I endorse connections I don't know well just to get reciprocal endorsements?
No — and this is an important integrity point. Endorsing people for skills you haven't observed directly is a form of professional misrepresentation, even if it's common. More practically, endorsements from connections who have no genuine basis for the endorsement carry less algorithmic weight and risk your profile's credibility with the human readers who matter most. Focus on quality endorsement relationships with people who genuinely know your work. The credibility of your endorsement profile — both algorithmically and perceptually — depends on it.
How long does it take to see LinkedIn search ranking improvements from building endorsements?
LinkedIn's algorithm updates profile signals on an ongoing basis, but meaningful search ranking improvements from endorsement building typically take one to three months of consistent activity to become visible. The changes are incremental — you won't go from page five to page one overnight. But over a six-to-twelve month period of deliberate endorsement building combined with active content publication and profile optimization, the cumulative improvement in search visibility and profile credibility is significant and measurable.
Ready to build a LinkedIn presence that actually reflects your professional credibility?
Ritner Digital helps professionals and businesses develop LinkedIn strategies that convert expertise into visibility — from skills optimization and endorsement building to content strategy and company page growth. If your LinkedIn profile isn't working as hard as you are, let's talk.