LinkedIn is the platform for all activities that further your career opportunities. However, LinkedIn Premium has us all splitting hairs over whether it is worth it. You might be interested to know that unlike other paid platforms out there that are vying to snag your money, LinkedIn is a breath of fresh air.
This may be because the benefits offer the biggest bang for your buck. Job hunts are stressful as they are. The added stress of lost money does not help. The job market is all about survival of the fittest and when all your competition has the necessary tools, you do not want to be at a disadvantage.
One tool you need to work optimally while talent/job hunt is your internet connection. You do not want to be missing opportunities because your internet signal starts glitching. Cox Internet solves this problem for you with its consistent connection and support.
With that advantage up your sleeve, you need to focus on your career objectives and see if LinkedIn Premium is your cup of tea or not. One evident thing is that the premium service can prove to be a lifesaver with savvy tools to accelerate your job search or help you look for the perfect addition to your team.
Let’s take a deeper look into the advantages of LinkedIn Premium to decide for ourselves.
How Much Does LinkedIn Premium Cost?
If you are wondering about the net cost, let’s break down the different plans for you:
- Career Plan: For $39.99 / month, you get 3 InMail messages with profile viewership data of the last 90 days. It also opens you up to 15000 courses for skill-building among other things.
- Business Plan: At $59.99 / month you get 15 InMail messages with profile viewership data of the last 90 days. With 15000 courses you can also view corporate insights to gauge growth and business strategies.
- Sales Navigator Professional Plan: For $99.99 / month, you get 20 InMail messages with profile viewership data of the last 90 days. Stored searches aid in building sales funnels and lead generation, as well as gaining insights about your leads.
- Recruiter Lite Plan: At $149.99 / month you get 3 InMail messages with profile viewership data of the last 90 days. Advanced search and filter criteria help you locate the most suitable candidates for your job post.
Benefits of LinkedIn Premium
Let’s look at some of the features that are specific to fulfilling your professional networking requirements.
- Networking Through InMail
Professional prowess is heavily dependent on how you network online and how much you stand out from the crowd. The InMail feature of LinkedIn helps you do exactly that. It opens a lot of windows of opportunity by letting you message people who are not already in your network, increasing the spectrum of your profile visibility. According to LinkedIn itself, InMail is 4.6 times more effective than a traditional cold email made to recruiters.
- Better Search
LinkedIn Premium allows you to look up just about any profile to a third connection. LinkedIn is limiting the search results for organic accounts heavily for its free users. Having a premium account puts you at an advantage over other basic users. If you are someone who searches a lot for their work, LinkedIn Premium saves a lot of time with more relevant search results.
- Featured Applicant
LinkedIn Premium lets you know if you are a “Top Applicant” for any post so you can apply to it with an edge over the other candidates. Getting such alerts comes in handy for a first come first get approach. With LinkedIn Premium, you will never miss an opportunity that is suited to you. It also puts you in the spotlight by applying as a “Featured Applicant”.
- Open Profile
An open profile is one of the more useful features of the LinkedIn Business plan. With this plan, people can reach out to you without InMail. It makes you a lot more approachable and people can message you without being in your network. This comes in especially handy for people who provide online consultations.
- Profile View Alerts
It is a very tempting prospect to find out who is looking you up. This helps you keep track of the circles you are making a footprint on. Knowing who is interested in scanning your profile also gives you an insight into where to apply next or who to connect with. These insights also help you tailor your interactions on the platform. Just make sure you save the results elsewhere because they tend to disappear to make room for new ones each day.
- LinkedIn Learning
This is one of the features of LinkedIn that helps you stay truly ahead of the curve. You can upskill and diversify with courses and certifications that are in demand in your field. You can do so by using one of the 15000 courses you get access to after purchasing a premium plan. This feature keeps you up-to-date with the fast-evolving digital industries.
- Competitive Intelligence
Once you walk out of an interview room and see all the candidates who are waiting, it is natural to wonder how they measure up against you. LinkedIn manifested this wonder into one of its features that gives you intelligence about your standing in the competition. You find out which percentile of candidates you lie to and which skills are getting you there, so you can work on refining them.
- Job Application Data
As previously established, the job market is all about competition. LinkedIn understood this a long time ago and offers a feature that gives you data on job posts. For example, you can find out about how many applicants have already applied to the job you are applying to. This gives you a good understanding of what you are up against.
- Interview Prep
The interview is a key step in furthering your recruitment goals. LinkedIn helps you develop your interview skills with its “Interview Preparation” feature. You get to practice a variety of questions relevant to the role you applied to. This ultimately puts you in a better place.
After considering all this, you can say that a LinkedIn Premium subscription is worth the price if you have the budget for it. However, one thing that you need to consider before getting a premium subscription is that you should be committed to using it as well. No subscription is worth the money if you let it sit. Acquaint yourself with the features to get the most out of your LinkedIn Premium experience.
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