LinkedIn Premium's career features could help you land a job 2x faster
You may be on the fence as to whether or not it’s worth paying for LinkedIn Premium.
Is it worth the money? Will it make enough difference to your job search?
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First things first
One of the best ways to access LinkedIn Premium is by signing up for a free trial of LinkedIn Learning - click here to learn more.
A free trial of LinkedIn Learning give you more than just access to over 16,000 professional courses. You'll also get access to the LinkedIn Premium Career features.
So, this is a great place to begin.
How much does LinkedIn Premium cost?
The current price of LinkedIn Premium stands at around £29.99 a month, or £239.88, if you pay annually.
LinkedIn Premium isn’t exactly cheap, and if you’re currently looking for a job, well, that can feel like a lot of money.
Is LinkedIn Premium worth the money?
In a word, yes, LinkedIn Premium is a great tool for job seekers. In fact, I would go as far as saying every job seeker should use the features available through a LinkedIn Premium Careers package to help them speed up their job search process.
LinkedIn claims that, ‘candidates with Premium Career get hired an average of 2X as fast’. (Check out the screenshot from LinkedIn Premium below).
Can you cancel a LinkedIn Premium free trial?
Before we go any further, I’m going to answer that all important question up front, the question that I'm sure you're asking right now; ‘can I cancel LinkedIn Premium after my free trial expires, and before I get charged?’.
Yes, you can cancel your LinkedIn Premium free trial. In fact, it’s really easy. LinkedIn even remind you to do it so that you don’t get charged! You can find out more information on LinkedIn's dedicated help page.
You should use LinkedIn Premium as part of your job search for three reasons:
There are actually lots of reasons why LinkedIn Premium should be incorporated into your job search strategy. But let me cover off the three top reasons why you should use a 30-day LinkedIn Premium free trial.
1. You should use a free trial of LinkedIn Premium to position yourself, your skills, and experience effectively online. Let's face it, most recruitment consultants and HR teams use LinkedIn to source candidates online.
If your LinkedIn profile is optimised, you are much more likely to get found, and get found fast. The features available to you as part of your LinkedIn Premium free trial, can have a huge impact upon your online visibility and prominence.
2. A free trial of LinkedIn Premium can speed up your job search. No one wants their job search to take any longer than it absolutely needs to. LinkedIn has become a powerful recruitment tool with an ever expanding reach and influence over hiring processes. Using LinkedIn Premium with focused effort for one month can expedite your job search process.
3. Free trials are brilliant and under-used, I have used LinkedIn Premium's Career features a number of times over the years, but I only ever use the free trial. I love free trials and I use them whenever I can to benefit from great tools without paying, and why not?!
As a self-employed entrepreneur, or should I say solopreneur, I use a lot of online tools and regularly make the most of free trials.
I have used the free version of Canva to design LinkedIn banners, LinkedIn profile pictures and other marketing materials.
I have used Grammarly for years to improve the quality of my writing.
A 30-day free trial of LinkedIn Premium can give your job search a huge boost
There isn’t a single silver bullet feature within LinkedIn Premium that’s going to transform your job search overnight.
However, fully leveraging all the available features, acting upon the available insights, networking and connecting with the right people and consistently improving your LinkedIn profile over the course of 30 days can have a massive overall effect.
It’s difficult to argue against the power and reach of LinkedIn when you consider the recent LinkedIn statistics below.
How do you get a free trial of LinkedIn Premium in 2022?
Begin by clicking here, you’ll now be offered four LinkedIn Premium options; LinkedIn Premium Career, LinkedIn Premium Business, LinkedIn Premium Sales Navigator Core, and Recruiter Lite.
We’re going to click ‘Learn more’ on the Career option. Note that you'll be getting a 1-month free trial of LinkedIn Premium and that LinkedIn will send you a reminder 7 days before your trial ends.
Now click on 'try Premium free'
Will you need to provide a payment method for a free trial of LinkedIn Premium?
Yes you will, however you will not be charged providing you cancel your plan before the free trial period expires, and LinkedIn make this very easy to do! You can use a debit card, credit card or paypal which makes this free trial very accessible for many people.
This is the message I received when I signed up for a LinkedIn Premium free trial.
LinkedIn Premium takes a payment method to ensure that they can charge you if you do choose to extend the use of the LinkedIn Premium features. As they state above, they will send you an email reminder 7 days before your free trial ends so that you can remember to cancel.
If you are concerned about forgetting, you can hit the cancel button even earlier and you'll still have access to the features for the remainder of the 30 days! Basically, LinkedIn are very good at helping you to cancel your free trial before you get charged.
You can learn more about the process for cancelling your LinkedIn Premium account on LinkedIn's own help page.
Select the monthly LinkedIn Premium plan
You'll be asked to select a plan (I selected monthly), you'll see that you won't be charged anything for the first month, and you are under no obligation to continue with LinkedIn Premium once the free trial has ended.