LinkedIn has added a new feature for users to display their professional competencies.

The new ‘Skill Assessments’ option will test your knowledge and provides you with a badge to expose your proven understanding.

The option helps to demonstrate your capacities, beyond Recommendations and Endorsements.

According to LinkedIn, 69% of professionals think their skills are bigger than college education when job-seeking, and more than 76% have been looking for a way for hiring managers to verify their skills so that they can stand out from other candidates.

This new option aims to address this.

To check listed skills, and have it listed on your profile, users need to:

• Scroll to the ‘Skills’ section of your profile
• Select the ‘Take skill quiz’ option
• Choose from one of the available Skill Assessments you’d like to take (LinkedIn will recommend courses based on your profile)
• If you pass the test, you can display it on your profile with a new badge

The recent results are private to users, and if you don’t pass, you’ll have complete control over the visibility of the results.

LinkedIn will also recommend learning courses you can take to improve your skills and pass the test at a later stage.

If you do pass,  LinkedIn will send you relevant job recommendations as soon as they’re posted.

It’s a nice option for LinkedIn, which further integrates its LinkedIn Learning platform into the app. And given LinkedIn’s unmatched visions into professional skills and competencies, no one is better placed to keep you updated on the latest in-demand skills and boost you display your capacity in the same.

The real test is coming down to how much individual recruiters know about these assessments, and how much they trust the results. If they don’t understand what these badges mean, it’s probably not going to be of significant value for job applications, but that, of course, will take time to develop.

And in that way, taking such courses will help LinkedIn’s algorithm to better understand your competencies and interests, and link you to more relevant job postings and recommendations.

LinkedIn’s Skill Assessments are rolling out globally “within the coming weeks”.