This Is How Broken LinkedIn Skills Really Are
When was the last time someone endorsed you or wrote you a recommendation on LinkedIn? Not years ago. Recently. This year?
This morning, I met with one of the most influential people in the global skills-first movement. Top-ten organization. Two years of completely reinventing how jobs, tasks, and skills actually work inside a company, everyone knows. Real change. Real outcomes. He speaks on global stages about this work.
After our highly engaging discussion, I went to endorse him for a few of the skills that were paramount in our conversation.
Five incredibly relevant skills on his profile that I observed and would happily vouch for.
- Skills Design
- Skills Taxonomy
- Skills Technology
- Skills Driven Organization
- Skills Platform
None of them had endorsements. Zero.
That is not a talent problem. That is not an engagement problem. That is a trust collapse.
Endorsements were meant to signal real experience. Instead, they turned into hollow clicks and favors. People stopped endorsing because it felt inauthentic.
Yet, LinkedIn keeps selling this obsolete, inflated data as ‘skills intelligence’ for hiring.
Let’s be honest. Selling broken trust at scale is not insight. It is malpractice.
AI Didn’t Hurt This. It Exposed It.
AI did not break LinkedIn skills. It revealed how fake they already were.
Profiles are written by LLMs. Résumés are prompt-engineered. Skills are copied, inferred, and optimized for keywords, not reality. Recommendations often read like marketing copy.
There is no proof layer. No audit trail. No moment where the system says, “Show me.”
Humans feel that risk instinctively.
So users disengage. They list skills for searchability, but stop validating others’ skills. The skills section becomes a graveyard while the algorithms continue amplifying this fiction.
Recruiters think they’re buying precision, but instead are buying noise powered by AI-generated feedback loops.
Proof Is the Only Way Forward
The fix is not more endorsements. It is fewer assumptions.
Skills must be treated like real-world capabilities. Self-reported first. Reviewed by someone who knows the work. Validated externally. That is how bias drops and trust becomes real.
- That is why a common language like SFIA, the Skills Framework for the Information Age, and the stewardship of the SFIA Foundation matter. Without shared definitions, skills cannot be compared, trusted, or governed.
- That is why a real, evidence-based system of record like the SkillsTX Talent eXperience matters. Skills must be inventoried, reviewed, validated, and tracked over time, not guessed at or keyword-matched.
- That is why digital badges issued through APMG International matter, when and only when they are backed by standards, assessment rigor, and evidence. Not decorative badges. Not participation trophies. Employer-grade signals that hold up under scrutiny.
- That is why verification through the acquisition of Credentials Cloud matters. It closes the loop by binding skills, learning, and real-world evidence into portable, auditable proof that moves with the individual.
Here is the part that should not be ignored.
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. SkillsTX is transactable in the Microsoft Azure marketplace.
The tools to fix this already exist inside the same ecosystem.
This is a direct call to Microsoft, and an open call to anyone else who resonates with this. Employers. Educators. Governments. Builders who know that trust without evidence is untenable in the age of AI.
Contact me. Call Paul Collins. Richard Pharro is completely on board. Dr. Peter Beven (FAITD) is transforming workforce pathways across higher ed globally. Or engage with our evangelical skills-first partner ecosystem.
If you believe digital talent deserves to be believed, not guessed at, now is the moment to change how we attract, develop, and retain skills that actually matter.
AUTHOR NOTE: Reproduced with thanks to John Kleist III, Chief Growth and Alliances Officer for SkillsTX and author of Digital Talent Strategies, a popular newsletter on LinkedIn. John is a LinkedIn “Top Voice” and a Human Capability Detective, turning talent assumptions into defensible evidence. If you believe humans still matter in the future of work, we are already aligned. If you want to prove it, let’s talk.
