How Much Does LinkedIn Premium Cost?

LinkedIn offers its basic membership for free, while a LinkedIn Premium Career account is $29.99 per month. The premium level allows direct email access to hiring managers, notifications of views of your resume, and courses from LinkedIn Learning. The latest version of LinkedIn Premium Career promises AI-powered search.

If you're actively job-hunting, the additional features of LinkedIn Premium Career may be worth the price. If you're not looking, your online profile and access to your contacts in the basic membership may be all you need. If you're not sure, you can try a one-month free trial.

LinkedIn Premium was previously called Job Seeker.

The company also offers a LinkedIn Premium Business tier that includes unlimited browsing and industry insights for $59.99 per month. More specialized tiers are offered for salespeople, recruiters, and users primarily interested in LinkedIn Learning.

How a LinkedIn Basic Account Works

LinkedIn claims to have a membership of one billion worldwide, and not all of them are actively job-hunting. The site has become a central place for professionals, business owners, freelancers, and consultants to keep in touch with their contacts, make new contacts, increase their public reach, list their services and credentials, and generally hang their public hats.

All of the above can be done with a LinkedIn basic account. You can:

• Create and maintain a professional identity online.
• Build a network of professional contacts.
• Receive recommendations for jobs from other LinkedIn members and provide recommendations for them.
• Search current job openings.
• Search for information on people, companies, and more.
• Read comments and commentaries from others, and post your own.
• Save your search results and receive weekly alerts about matches.
• Receive (but not send) unlimited InMail messages.

What You Get with LinkedIn Premium Career

The Premium Career account offers a number of additional and expanded features:

Premium Profile 

This feature slaps a badge on your profile picture and search results. As a premium member, you can turn this feature on through the settings page.

The badge is intended to help you stand out from the rest of the job-seeking crowd and alert viewers that you take your work or job hunt seriously.

Full List of Profile Views 

Premium members get more information about people who view their profiles. You'll get a list of everyone who accessed your profile, including name, company, and job title.

If you're actively looking for a job, that can help you tailor your approach to companies that are hiring.

InMail 

InMail is LinkedIn’s personal message system. Premium Career gives you email access to everybody on LinkedIn, including people outside your network, like hiring managers. This is limited to five messages per month, possibly to prevent spamming, but extras can be purchased.

If you're job-hunting, this can be a valuable feature. Your LinkedIn message is less likely to be overlooked than an approach via regular email. 

Advanced Search 

The premium search filter lets you fine-tune searches and save time looking for the right job or the recruiters most likely to be interested in your skillset.

Parameters include the ability to search for people based on company size, Fortune 500 ranking, seniority, and more. 

LinkedIn Learning 

The Premium Careers tier gives users access to LinkedIn's library of online courses. The library of video and text courses is divided into major sections including Business, Creative, Technology, and Certifications.

Salary Insights

The premium level gets you access to information on average compensation for your profession in your region. You can use this any time you want to get all worked up.

Competitive Insights

The premium level includes Job Insights, a feature that compares your qualifications with those of other applicants for the same job. At best, this can alert you to aspects of your resume that you should expand or emphasize. In any case, it may help you determine if it's potentially a good fit for you.

Additional LinkedIn Premium Benefits

Built-in features available on LinkedIn’s Premium Career account are only part of the picture. Observations by those who have used Premium Career reveal a few additional advantages.

Connecting With Executives

Top executives tend to insulate themselves through privacy settings. InMail, mostly because it is trusted and somewhat more exclusive, can help you connect with people you would not otherwise be able to contact directly.

While you can receive an unlimited number of InMail messages with a Basic account, you can only send messages outside your contacts list if you have a premium membership.

Higher Response Rate to InMail

Another advantage of InMail, again due to the trust factor, is that the response rate is higher than with traditional email.

The actual response rate varies—mostly with the degree to which the InMail is personalized—but in general, many job seekers find that the likelihood of getting a response goes up when using InMail. 

Increase In Profile Views

Something as simple as the number of views of your profile can have a significant impact on your ability to connect with the right employer. As with ad views, more profile views put your product (you) in front of more people and increase the likelihood that one of them will want to hire you.

Recruiters note that when someone has gone to the trouble and expense of obtaining a premium membership, it indicates they are more serious about a professional presentation. That makes it more likely they will take time to view the profile.

The Bottom Line

You won't really know if it's worth it until you try it. A one-month free trial of LinkedIn Premium Career is easy to set up.

At the end of the trial, if you don’t feel you’ve gained enough benefit to justify the cost, you can drop back to the basic free membership.

If you sign up for LinkedIn Premium Career, take the time to explore all available services and make an honest attempt to use them. Otherwise, you’ll never know which feature may have helped you land that dream job.