Which LinkedIn Premium Product: A Guide

LinkedIn Premium Products List

• Premium Career for the job seeker
• Sales Navigator for the lead generator
• Recruiter Lite for the talent scout
• Premium Business for the analytics enthusiast
• LinkedIn Learning for the skill enhancer

Audience and Pricing

Key Features

Premium Business

• You will love the analytics that are offered through this subscription! If you are interested in watching the hiring trends of your competitors, industry movement, and understanding the demographics of who views your profile, this subscription is for you. These analytics are crucial measurements to understand how you are being perceived and who you are attracting.
• You get 15 InMail messages a month which you can use to reach out to anyone on LinkedIn, regardless of connection status. You can also see who has viewed your profile. This feature makes it easier, and less stressful to send messages across the platform. Who knows, you might have found your next business partner!

Premium Career

• One of the features of Premium Career is the ability to talk directly to hiring managers on LinkedIn. With InMail messaging, you can send messages directly to people even if you’re not connected with them. Sounds great in theory, but you’ve got to have a really well written message to break through the noise that hiring managers, CEOs, and other key people are faced with every day on LinkedIn. Some people ignore these messages, so there’s got to be something else in Premium Career and that is…
• The ability to view people who have visited your profile. What a great way to start a conversation!  Premium Career allows you to see who viewed you over the past 90 days, compared to the free version of LinkedIn which only lets you see 5 viewers from the past 90 days. This feature feeds into people’s nosiness and I would go so far as to say it is The Key Feature of the paid version!

Sales Navigator

• If you or your business are focused on lead generation, you will enjoy the Sales Navigator Advanced Search. You get access to over 35 additional search filters that will help you find the exact person you are looking for. Some of the filters are postal code radius, seniority level, and even shared experiences/commonalities. These will help you save time and increase accuracy.
• Sales Navigator also allows you to  seamlessly integrate LinkedIn into two of the most widely used CRM systems – ie. Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce. If you are using either of these, you won’t have to go back and forth between them.

Recruiter Lite

• What we love most about Recruiter Lite is the ability to access and fully communicate with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd connections. Free versions of linkedIn only allow you to communicate with 1st and 2nd connections. That is enough for most users, but if you’re in a recruitment role, you want to be able to scan the entire LinkedIn universe to find the best talent!
• Another great feature of this subscription is having 20 additional search filters designed exactly for recruiters. Some of the filters include skills, past employers, and even years of experience. The extra filters help you find candidates that match your criteria. These filters are important to finding the talent you need and want and are not available on the unpaid LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Learning

• The platform offers over 16,000 unique courses taught by industry practitioners, in 7 languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Mandarin, and Brazilian Portuguese) so you have no excuse not to be always learning when you have this subscription. 
• Not only do you have access to courses on your desktop, but you can continue viewing on mobile devices, when you have no data or if you lose reception by activating offline mode. 
• It is important to know that LinkedIn Learning is offered as a stand-alone package for anyone  looking to enhance their skills, but it is also included in every package listed above (Premium Career, Premium Business, Sales Navigator Professional, Recruiter Lite) which we think is really great.

Get 30 Days of LinkedIn Premium for Free Several Times A Year!

There’s usually a large ad for Premium on the top right of your profile offering one month for free, but  the cycle runs several times a year, so you will always get more than one opportunity to enjoy LinkedIn premium products for free during the year! We thought you might like this. 

Tip: always accept Premium when it’s offered to you for free.

Is It Worth It?

We’ve just listed off a lot of features for different paid subscription offerings on LinkedIn and now you probably are asking yourself, “but is LinkedIn Premium worth it for me?”

• Looking to grow your business? Then yes. The additional insights that Premium Business offers are great.
• Job hunting? Maybe Premium Career is for you while you are looking to network and make connections along the way.
• If you’re a Recruiter, looking for the best talent in your industry. Then it’s a definite yes.
• If you’re a regular person working in your role, not looking to change, but wanting to use LinkedIn correctly so that when the time comes to change jobs, you will be all set – then free is fine.
• If you’re a business owner on LinkedIn and you are happy with your profile, and not a daily user of the platform, then you are also OK with free.

Summary

LinkedIn Premium offers many features that are not available on the free version of LinkedIn. Take your pick from the five paid products available. Each one is geared to different audiences and offers different benefits that may be of interest.

Whether or not you need a paid subscription for LinkedIn depends on your job role and your current goals.  If you’re not sure, you don’t need it!

At the end of the day, you will make the choice for yourself, but make sure to take advantage of the one month free subscription to best understand the features and benefits of the subscription that excites you.