LinkedIn is a great free service that helps you build a professional network—but if you’ve used LinkedIn, you’ll know that the site tries to get you to upgrade to its premium offering on a regular basis. So, is LinkedIn Premium worth it?
In this article, we’ll take a look at LinkedIn Premium, discovering how much it costs, the benefits you get, and whether or not it’s good value for money.
How Much Does LinkedIn Premium Cost?
LinkedIn Premium actually has four different price tiers:
- Premium Career: $29.99/month
- Premium Business: $59.99/month
- Sales Navigator Pro: $79.99/month
- Recruiter Lite: $119.95/month
These prices don’t include sales tax, which could be applicable where you live. And you can pay annually to save 20 percent, which is a sizable amount of money.
Each tier offers different features, which we’ll cover later. However, most LinkedIn users will be interested in Premium Career—so you can plan on paying $30/month (or $288/year).
You can get a free LinkedIn Premium trial to try it out for a month. That will give you a good idea of how the features will help you in your quest to land a new job. Many of the benefits are long-term, though, so do keep that in mind.
LinkedIn Premium Features
Let’s start with the basic Premium Career features:
- 5 InMail messages per month
- See how many searches you appeared in and how many people have viewed your profile
- Additional information on posted jobs
- Additional salary information
- Access to on-demand learning videos
The first two features are probably the big draw of Premium Career. Being able to message other users (with or without GIFs) without connecting to them first (or being in the same group) is a huge benefit of LinkedIn Premium.
Here’s what you gain from each level of LinkedIn Premium:
- Premium Business gives you additional information businesses and unlimited people searches.
- Sales Navigator Pro gives you advanced search filters and the ability to make notes on user profiles, as well as numerous sales tools.
- Recruiter Lite gives you guided search smart suggestions, projects, and other recruiting-focused features.
LinkedIn Premium Benefits
Since most readers will be interested in Premium Career, we’ll focus on the benefits of that particular LinkedIn subscription.
In short, Premium Career helps you make connections and find a job. And that’s what could make LinkedIn Premium worth it for you.
If you’re searching for a job, Premium Career’s InMail credits, insight into who looked at your profile, and additional job information will all be very useful.
InMail lets you reach out to people who work at companies you’re interested in without trying to connect with them first—it’s a great tool for networking.
In the above image, you can see the LinkedIn Premium icon next to the message button. That means I can send an InMail using my Premium credits.
The value of taking a look at who’s viewed your profile can’t be overstated. You can connect with those people, reach out to recruiters who have shown interest, or use your InMail credits to offer any help to people who look like they’d be valuable connections.
Additional job information may or may not be useful; when you’re looking through job listings, LinkedIn will tell you if you seem like a good candidate for a particular position.
Premium Career has some limitations, though. If you run a lot of people searches in a short period of time, LinkedIn will stop showing you results and tell you to get a Business subscription. And if you’re serious about making connections, you’re going to want more InMail credits.
That’s where the Premium Career vs. Premium Business distinction comes in. With Premium Business you get 10 InMail credits and unlimited people searching. Which is great for making connections. The additional information you can find on businesses may or may not be useful to you.
The next two levels are for sales and recruiting professionals. If you’re considering one of these products, you probably already know quite a bit about it. Segmentation, suggestions, email integration, projects, and other features will be a huge help in doing your job.
Reasons Why LinkedIn Premium Is Worth It
If you’re still not sure if you should pay for LinkedIn Premium, here are three specific reasons to consider:
1. See Who Looks at Your Profile
The first reason is because you get to see the people who looked at your profile. That might not seem like a big deal, but it’s hugely useful for making valuable connections.
Lots of people are looking at profiles on LinkedIn. Some are recruiters. Others are executives and managers looking to hire. Many are people in your field looking to make professional networking connections. All of these people make LinkedIn Premium worth it.
Even if you’re not looking for a job at the moment, you probably will be at some point in the future. And being well connected with people in your field has a lot of benefits, even outside of job hunting.
When you see that someone looked at your profile, it means they wanted to learn more about you. And that’s plenty reason to get in touch, either with an InMail or a connection request.
2. Get Access to Improved Metrics
The second reason is the ability to see your search appearances and profile views. Again, this might not seem like a huge deal. But if you’re trying to improve your LinkedIn profile (and you should be!), it’s a great metric for measuring your success.
When I joined LinkedIn Premium and started keeping track of my profile views, I had 30 or so per week. I now have closer to 150 per week. That’s five times as many people that see my profile on a weekly basis.
This means that when you update your LinkedIn profile, you’ll get feedback very quickly on whether or not those changes have worked.
Without this, you’re going to have a much harder time figuring out whether or not you’ve improved your LinkedIn profile.
3. Unlock the LinkedIn Premium Badge
Finally, having a LinkedIn Premium account can improve your image. It seems inconsequential, but the little gold icon in your profile and on search results shows that you’re serious about using LinkedIn to build connections.
You might be surprised at how much more seriously people take you when you have that badge. Which makes it worth having when it comes to professional networking and job searching.
In conclusion, we believe LinkedIn Premium is well worth the investment, but you’ll need to make sure your profile is great to really take advantage of it. Start by using these tips to perfect your LinkedIn summary.
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