It was almost 10 years ago that I wrote my last article focused on the subject of whether LinkedIn Premium subcriptions are worth the investment, or not, for the average job hunter — so I figure it’s high time to revisit this question, again, given how often it comes up!
Surprisingly, in reading back through that earlier article, very little has changed in terms of this topic and virtually all of my earlier recommendations still hold true here in 2024. Despite the constant nagging by LinkedIn for free users to upgrade to a paid subscription, and all of the compelling features they showcase, the simple truth is that most standard job seekers aren’t going to benefit much (in my opinion) from leveling up to a premium account. And this claim seems to be borne out by the majority of clients I’ve worked with who have taken the plunge and purchased a paid account at some point. They typically report not seeing any real difference in results.
So here’s a quick and highly subjective rundown on the topic, for those people who are still on the fence and trying to decide whether to make the $30/mo (or more) investment:
1) For starters, you’ll find a complete list of LinkedIn Premium account types here — and there are only two types of paid accounts that the average job seeker should ever consider, which are the Premium Career and Premium Business options, since the Sales Navigator and Recruiter subscription types are for highly specialized audiences and require a pretty sizeable investment.
2) As I observed even a decade ago, the only unquestionable reason a free user would ever need to upgrade to a paid plan is if they end up using LinkedIn heavily and run into the Commercial Use Limit restriction. This issue arises when a free user has exceeded the number of searches they’re allowed in a given month. Almost nobody ever hits this limit, and LinkedIn doesn’t even disclose what the limit number is, exactly — but if you’re one of the unlucky few who DOES run into it, you’d have to get the Premium Business account (NOT the Career subscription) to unlock unlimited searching. Alternatively, you can just wait until the next month when your monthly bandwidth as a free user would reset. But if you’re a diehard LinkedIn user and just can’t limp by for a week or two without access to the site, again, the Premium Business account would be the one you’d want to grab.
3) Although many of you might already know this, LinkedIn offers a free one-month subscription to any of their paid plans (provided you haven’t used this option yet) so you can certainly try out any of the subscription types and see what you think. Just check in the Me / Account menu of your LinkedIn page to access this offer. But doing so DOES require you to enter your payment details, so make sure to put a note in your calendar to cancel the subscription within 30 days or you can be darn sure your credit card will be dinged for it!
4) And lastly, as for the very tempting “Premium Career” subscription most of my clients usually consider, here’s a quick breakdown of the features it offers and why, again, I just don’t see any compelling evidence they’re critical in a job search — even if it might be a “nice to have” option for those people who can easily afford it.
— InMail Credits: As a Premium Career subscriber, you’re granted 5 “InMail” credits each month allowing you write a direct message to anybody on LinkedIn without going through a mutual contact. Alas, I find that a high percentage of these “cold” messages don’t generate responses and one can always use the Connect / Add a Note option as a free user, which largely accomplishes the same thing. So again, while nice to have, I don’t find InMail credits to be a critical feature for most job hunters.
— See Who’s Viewed Your Profile: As a Career subscriber, you’ll be be able to see the names, companies, and other details of the people who have checked out your LinkedIn profile recently. Alas, again, while this feature is nice from a curiosity standpoint, it doesn’t really improve your fortunes in a practical sense. Not only do certain users click on peoples’ profiles by accident, or when looking for somebody else with a similar name, but even if a recruiter/manager from a given company (e.g. Microsoft) does check you out, it’s likely they’d already be reaching out to you if they had any sincere interest in a chat. So while sure, you could follow up with them just to be sure, I still don’t find this feature to represent any sort of game-changing benefit.
— LinkedIn Learning: While yes, as a paid subscriber you’d be able to access the wealth of useful online courses contained on LinkedIn’s “Learning” platform, the dirty little secret is that these same courses are available for free via most local library websites (such as the King County library). So it may not be worth $30/mo for this feature alone, again, if you have a library card and can just access these same courses via that channel.
— Applicant Insights: Lastly, as a Career plan subsciber, you gain access to detailed statistics about how many applicants you’re up against when applying to posted LinkedIn jobs, as well as some analytical feedback about how closely your talents match the role at hand. In fairness, I think this is probably the most useful feature of the bunch. But again, does it really change anything? Especially if you realize that one’s ranking is strictly based on a one-dimensional factor, which is how closely (or not) the keywords in your Skills section match up to the stated requirements of the advertisement? To me, you can pretty much accomplish the same thing by reading the job description closely and cross-referencing it with your “Skills” list, but sure, I understand it’s a little more convenient to have LinkedIn do this on your behalf. The question is whether it’s a convenience that’s worth $30/mo to you.
So there you have it. That’s my quick-and-dirty treatise on the potential usefulness of a LinkedIn subscription to the typical job hunter — and my thoughts on why a lot of the features trumpeted by such subscriptions (particularly the Career one) aren’t as significant as one might think. Again, there’s no harm in trying one of the subscriptions out for a free month, if you’d like, and I’d also mention (to LinkedIn’s credit) that they also offer a free year of Premium Career access to U.S. military veterans if you happen to fit that distinction.
As always, hope this rundown was helpful and if any of you have further insights or experiences to share on the subject of LinkedIn subscriptions and their relative usefulness, I’d love to hear them!
