have you put in the time and money into receiving a certificate to show off on your cv only to have linkedin shove it to the bottom of the list? linkedin currently lets you arrange many sections of your profile to allow you to show off your most admirable skills, talents and experiences. the licenses & certifications section is not one of them.

you can find many complaints online sent to the linkedin team asking for them to make this a feature, but from what i’ve seen, at the most, a mod responds back that he or she will pass the suggestion onto the dev team. i believe i have found a workaround in the meantime (please correct me if i am wrong in the comments).

currently, linkedin will arrange your certificates in order from farthest out expiration date to nearest expiration date (with a date range entered into the issue date and expiration date). beneath those you’ll find your expired certificates (with a date range input into both date fields). at the bottom you’ll find certificates that have absolutely no dates selected for the issue date or expiration date in the certification details.

but, certificates with an issue date and the check box marked “this credential does not expire” checked (i.e. no expiration date), those show up at the very top.

this structure should allow you to arrange your achievements in the order you’d like. sure your favorite certificates might have an expiration date, but if you have the proper credential id and credential url filled out, anyone wanting to verify your creds can click on through.

so to recap the order:

1. certs with an issue date and “this credential does not expire” checked

2. certs with an issue date and an expiration date that is farthest out (the closer to the current date, the lower they go)

3. certs with an issue date and an expiration date that have expired

4. certs with no date selected for either issue date or expiration date

licenses and certifications are great to have on your linkedin profile. at the most they tell potential employers that you might be skilled in the topic at hand, and at the very least they show you’re willing to put your own time (and sometimes money) into continued education and self-learning. real world examples of your experience and past work are always the true winners.

anyways, i got tired of having certain certificates outshining others that were more relevant to my current ambitions in my job search, so i set out to find how linkedin tethers our trophies. for all you nihilists who use no dates for all certificates, i have not tested this, and i admire your apathy for order. i hope this helps, and happy learning!

edit 10/19/20: since writing this lengthy piece, i found an alternative that allows you full control over the way you order your l&cs: remove all issued and expires dates from every certificate, and place the number slot you’d like the certificate to appear before the cert name i.e. 1 - [certificate name], 2 - [certificate name], etc. linkedin organizes l&cs alphabetically and naturally places numbers higher than letters when there is no date range selected. to me, this looks sloppy and borderline deceptive. if you have a credential id and credential url, you should include these when posting your achievement(s). but if absolute order is your thing, have at it.

note: i am in no way trying to encourage false representation by promoting skills you are not adept in. i’m merely presenting a solve to a linkedin customization feature that has yet to be implemented.

postscript: this article was originally posted on 03/11/19. it was born on my old portfolio’s blog. i manually moved it here to my new(er) site.

below are the comments from the original post. i’m not sure how any of this has aged. tbh, i have not messed with the order of my certifications since writing this.

[pasted 08/21/25]

Emre 5 months ago · 0 Likes
Doesnt work
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Jessica 7 months ago · 0 Likes
Thank you so much for this article. I was like... how can there be so much customization, but none in this section. Hence why I ended up here with a quick Google search.
I ended up deleting all of my issue and expiry dates from the actual date fields and then typing them into the Credential ID field so they are still visible, but not ordered by that information. They are then ordered by their title, to which I ended up using Through (info on organization, then the certification) to bring some of them to the bottom, alphabetical order, and using an asterisk on my most important one to bring it to the top as my methods of organizing.
Feel free to check it out: www.linkedin.com/in/123jessicamarie. I appreciate you setting this information out there! So many helpful comments as well. I love the results!
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Caleb 2 years ago · 0 Likes
Very useful, thank you!
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g 2 years ago · 0 Likes
if you remove the issue and expire dates, linkedin will order your licenses/certs alphabetically. i learned if you put an asterisk at the beginning of the license/cert that will bring it to the top of the list. in my case all my certs have external links where the viewer can click to validate that the cert is legit. so i felt no need to share the dates of issue/expiration. it was more important to me to have the one i wanted shown at the top of the list. hope this helps.
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Nendo 2 years ago · 0 Likes
The "this does not expire" box has been removed. Anyone knows any other way to rearrange certificates?
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Nigel D 2 years ago · 0 Likes
I read this post a few months ago as I found it very useful. However, I am returning to post a comment, as I believe LinkedIn have recently made changes to this functionality. Now, all my "licenses and certifications" appear in date order according to when they were obtained (newest at the top), regardless of whether they have expiry dates or not. Just thought I'd let you know this. Unfortunately, there is still no way to manually adjust the order, but I think this change does at least make more sense logically.
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Subash John 2 years ago · 0 Likes
Thanks for documenting the problem and sharing your thoughts
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Michele 2 years ago · 0 Likes
Appreciate this tip as I wanted to show off my new Salesforce cert! While it does have an expiration date, I just went back and removed the month and year and success!
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Erik 2 years ago · 0 Likes
It worked! Thanks so much!
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Maksym Ganistrat 4 years ago · 0 Likes
I use this tactic:

1. If my certificate has an issue date - I set it in options.

1.1 If its certificate doesn't have much value for me - I set exp. date and he goes down in the list.
2. If it's a valuable certificate and he has an expired date - I don't set an expired date. (I know when certificate is expired, and when it was - i set expiration date and certificate go down in LinkedIn list)
3. For some certificates, that I want to place at the top of the list I use "unprintable blank characters" (google: invisible characters for the nickname in Minecraft )) and don't set exp. date
4. If I have a certificate, achieved in the same month (or latest) and they are placed on top - I just set the maximum exp. date.

Combine these tactics and NEVER STOP LEARNING! )
Have a nice day!

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de 4 years ago · 0 Likes

None worked, not even the spaces hack :\

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mansoor khan 4 years ago · 0 Likes

Thanks - I was looking for this
Why the "dev team" has not implemented this is a mystery

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P. Connors 4 years ago · 0 Likes

Neither of the approaches mentioned worked for me.

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Vinicius 4 years ago · 0 Likes

Is this still working? It seems now that by uncheking "This credential does not expire" it makes no effect and is checked again on next edit.

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Me 4 years ago · 0 Likes

I have an update to your hack. Add a space in front of the title and it will push it to the top. If you have two things you want at the top, put 2 spaces in front of the first one and 1 space in front of the second one. If two items have the same amount of spaces in front, then it sorts alphabetically, so use extra spaces to maneuver items around.

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Robyn 4 years ago · 0 Likes

Thank you sooooo much for this. As soon as I made this change it went straight to the top of the list!!!

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Arleigh Holzgen 4 years ago · 0 Likes

Thank you!!!

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chinonye 4 years ago · 0 Likes

This was helpful! Much appreciated.

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Raphylee 4 years ago · 0 Likes

Thanks for sharing. It was helpful

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Funmilayo 4 years ago · 0 Likes

Thanks for this. Great hack!

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leave a comment if there’s a new trick!

linkedIn hack: rearrange licenses & certifications

clark ogier | copywriter

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