LinkedIn Unveils New Skills Product To Fuel Professional and Career Insights

LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network on the Internet with more than 90 million members worldwide, today launched the beta release of LinkedIn Skills, a new product that helps members discover up-and-coming expertise areas that professionals need to succeed.

LinkedIn Skills is designed to surface the top people, top locations, related jobs, and groups associated with thousands of skills which LinkedIn members have identified as areas of expertise. Members can use LinkedIn Skills to help stay ahead of the competition and discover hot skills professionals are adding to their profiles – from application development to business intelligence to calligraphy. LinkedIn Skills also provides top related skills for a given industry with trending information on which skill is growing or declining in that industry.

“With today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, LinkedIn is offering the unique ability to pinpoint top experts for a particular skill set, in addition to providing relevant and actionable insights about trending skills that can help professionals manage their careers,” said DJ Patil, LinkedIn's chief scientist. "Through LinkedIn Skills we believe we have a whole new way of understanding the landscape of skills - who has them and how they are changing over time – and how truly diverse the universe of skills actually is, whether it’s java or ballet.”

For the professional looking to break into a new industry or expand their expertise areas, LinkedIn Skills offers the ability to add new skills to their profile, surface the top professionals who have similar expertise and related companies where the desired expertise will have the most impact. Hiring managers can also benefit from the ability to identify top candidates and talent who possess the specific skills the professional organization needs. LinkedIn Skills is one of the many new products that leverages LinkedIn’s deep professional data and provides rich, relevant insights that help members manage their careers and create opportunities for themselves and their professional network. To learn more about LinkedIn Skills, check out the official LinkedIn Blog.