How to Get More LinkedIn Endorsements And Why They Matter!

Getting more LinkedIn endorsements is one of the fastest credibility shortcuts on the platform — and most people are doing it backwards. After training 79,000+ students across 74 courses, I can tell you the operators who get endorsed consistently follow a give-first system, not a beg-first one.

Direct Answer: LinkedIn endorsements are confirmations from your connections that you actually have the skills listed on your profile. They boost your profile strength, improve your visibility in LinkedIn search results, and influence hiring managers and clients deciding whether to work with you. To get more of them, update your skills section, endorse others first, and send short personalised requests to former colleagues and managers.

Why LinkedIn Endorsements Still Matter In 2026

Endorsements are not a vanity metric. When a connection endorses you, LinkedIn treats it as a credibility signal and pushes your profile higher in search results for that skill. That single mechanic can change the entire game — recruiters filtering candidates, prospects scanning consultants, brands looking for collaborators all see endorsement counts before they read your About section.

I've watched students land interviews and clients purely because their top three skills had visible endorsements next to them. The skill itself was not unique. The social proof was.

Step 1: Update Your Skills List Before You Ask For Anything

Before chasing LinkedIn endorsements, audit your skills section. Don't load it up with everything you've ever touched. Prioritise skills that match your current career goal — the role you want next, the offer you sell, the niche you're building authority in.

• Remove skills that are no longer relevant to where you're headed.
• Add 3-5 skills tied to your current positioning.
• Pin the skills you most want endorsed to the top three slots — those are the ones LinkedIn shows by default.

If your skills section says one thing and your headline says another, endorsements work against you. Alignment first, outreach second.

Step 2: Endorse Others First — The Thumb Rule Of Social Media

This is the rule almost everyone breaks. The thumb rule of social media is simple: what you want to receive, you give first. Want more likes, comments and shares? Start liking, commenting and sharing other people's posts. Want more endorsements? Start endorsing others.

Be strategic about it. Don't spray endorsements across your entire network. Endorse people whose endorsements you would actually value in return — people in your industry, with strong profiles, whose name next to your skill carries weight. The reciprocity rate on this is high. Most people return the favour within a week.

Step 3: Send Short, Personalised Requests Using ChatGPT

For close colleagues and former managers, a direct ask works better than waiting for reciprocity. The mistake I see is people sending five-paragraph emails when LinkedIn is a messaging platform. Nobody reads long DMs.

Here's the workflow I use:

• Open ChatGPT and prompt it: "How can I politely ask a former manager or colleague for a skill endorsement on LinkedIn? Write a draft."
• ChatGPT will give you something with a subject line and a long body. Both are wrong for a LinkedIn DM.
• Tell ChatGPT: "Make the message shorter and remove the subject line."

The version that actually works looks like this:

"Hi [Name], hope you're doing well. I'm updating my LinkedIn profile and would really appreciate it if you could endorse me for [specific skill]. Your endorsement would mean a lot given our work together at [company]. Thanks!"

Two sentences plus a thank-you. That's the format. Long messages get archived; short specific asks get actioned.

Step 4: Reorder Your Skills To Showcase The Right Endorsements

Once endorsements start coming in, the work isn't done — managing them is what separates a strong profile from a cluttered one. LinkedIn lets you reorder skills by dragging and dropping in the skills section.

Here's how I think about ordering, and a quick ChatGPT prompt makes it easier: "Analyse my LinkedIn skills section and suggest an order based on my career focus."

• Top slot: the skill most relevant to your current career or business goal — even if it has fewer endorsements.
• Second slot: the skill with the highest endorsement count, for instant credibility.
• Third slot: a complementary skill that rounds out your positioning.

On my own profile, website building has seven endorsements while performance marketing has none yet. I still keep the most strategically relevant skills near the top — what's at the top is what people see first, and visibility beats raw count.

Step 5: Make Endorsement Requests A Quarterly Habit

Endorsements decay in attention value. A skill endorsed three years ago by a connection you no longer engage with carries less weight than a recent one from someone active in your industry. Block 30 minutes every quarter to:

• Endorse 10-15 people in your network whose work you respect.
• Send 5 short personalised endorsement requests to recent collaborators.
• Reorder your skills based on what you're currently selling, applying for, or pitching.

This compounds. Within a year you'll have a top-three skills section that recruiters and clients trust on sight.

The Real Reason This Works

Endorsements influence hiring decisions, client-buying decisions, and brand collaboration decisions. People making those calls are skimming, not reading. They look at your photo, your headline, your top skills with endorsement counts — and decide in under ten seconds whether you're worth a deeper look. LinkedIn endorsements shape that ten-second judgement more than your About paragraph ever will.

Keep your skills updated, engage with your network, and treat endorsements as a give-first system rather than something to ask for in panic before a job hunt. The next step you can take today: open LinkedIn, endorse five people whose endorsements you'd value in return, and watch how many come back within seven days.

Keep Learning

If this was useful, these are worth reading next:

• How to be a RECRUITER with no EXPERIENCE?! Explained by Recruiter
• Are you loosing to AI?
• Or go further with the AI Mastery Course — used by 79,000+ students across 150+ countries.

Source: LinkedIn Premium pricing page, accessed 2026. AED conversion at 3.67 AED/USD.