I love the power of LinkedIn! It's an incredible tool, that has many tools within it, to help you accomplish your goals. I'm often asked by individuals managing their careers as to whether or not it makes sense to pay for the "upgraded" Job Seeker package. In a word... NO!
While LinkedIn has been slowly stripping functionality away from the free account, there's still enough "juice" left for individuals to do what they need to do. Let's take a step back to the beginning...
LinkedIn is a great tool! The main purpose of LinkedIn (as my friend Jason Alba would say) is to find and be found. Now, you might argue that Facebook does the same thing. Yes... but LinkedIn is focused on jobs and clients - not what you're doing for dinner or that you stepped on your cat's tail again.
So what do most people do? The get on LinkedIn and start figuring out ways to find others. LinkedIn knows this, so they try to sell you on this Job Seeker package. But, what do "Guerrillas" do? They look at what everyone else is doing, and then do the opposite! They setup their profiles so that they can be found - like a magnet.
With my current "Job Hunter" profile on LinkedIn, I get (on average) about 3 recruiters reaching out to me every week. And I'm only using the free LinkedIn account.
So let's break down what you get with the Job Seeker package:
- Job Seeker Badge - Let's face it... the sad truth is that when you're unemployed, people usually form an unfair perception that you might be "needy" or "undesirable". Recruiters prefer to hire people already in a job (referred to as Passive candidates). So the badge (as well as references to unemployed, seeking, and so forth) is b-a-a-a-a-a-a-d! Guerrillas know how to change this perception.
- Zero in on $100k+ Jobs - If you read the fine print, this info is pulled from Salary.com, which is freely available to anyone. Plus, since the salary isn't "necessarily endorsed by the companies who post jobs," I think this is kind of misleading.
- Featured Applicant - OK, so you apply for a job on LinkedIn (this doesn't work on any other site) and you get moved to the top of the list. How about someone else with a Job Seeker package that applies to the same job - are they also at the top of the list? Last time I checked, there's only room at the top for 1 person - so which one are you? Also, just because you're at the top, does that guarantee that the Recruiter will look at your application first?
- InMail Messages - If you're going to spend the money anyway for InMails, it MIGHT make sense to signup for the service for a month, then cancel it. I prefer to look at the person's company page, click through to their website, click the Contact Us link, call the main switchboard and ask for the person by name. Or look them up on ZoomInfo, Jigsaw, Google, and other sites.
- Profile Organizer - This is kind of nice, but if you're serious about managing your career, you need a tool built just for that purpose. Jason Alba's JibberJobber site does that. Best of all, he's actually got a FREE version you can use - FOREVER!
- Get Introduced - If you're not already an Open Networker, this might help you. But I prefer other ways (as mentioned in the InMail section).
- Webinar - Uh, that's already available to everyone for free. You can even watch a pre-recorded version and slides here.
- Full Profiles - Here's one of the examples where LinkedIn has crippled the free account. Instead of seeing the full profile of a person outside of my network, I get a watered-down version. Guerrillas know how to find out this information. One way is to call a former employee and ask! They're more likely to share info since they don't have to worry about any retaliation - and you can't get that kind of info from LinkedIn, even if you paid for it.
- Who's Viewed Your Profile - To me, this is like checking the caller ID for missed calls when no one has left a message... if it wasn't important enough for them to contact me, then why should I care if they looked at my profile? Besides, what am I going to do - reach out to them? "Uh, hi... I noticed you looked at my profile but didn't reach out to me. Can you help me find a job, p-l-e-a-s-e?" ;-)
- OpenLink - As long as your settings are enabled to receive Introductions and InMails, and Recruiters are paying for the LinkedIn Recruiter package, they can already contact you for free. Guerrillas know how to let everyone else contact you for free anyway, even with a watered-down profile (if you don't then you need to do a little bit of homework).
- Priority Customer Service - OK, they got me here :-p
- Premium Search - With a free account, you can only see the first 100 results in a search. Paid accounts get higher limits. Well, if you re-sort your search, you get to see mostly different people from the first 100 you already saw. Use different criteria or keywords and get a whole new list of 100 results. If you can't find what you're looking for within the first 100 results, chances are you're not going to find it by paying to see 1,000+ results.
- This advice is for Job Hunters, not people looking to use LinkedIn for business purposes or getting clients - there are other packages available for those purposes.
- I didn't say I loved LinkedIn... I said I love the POWER of LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is a great tool, run by great people, who deserve to make money. I just wish they would provide BETTER VALUE for what they're trying to charge. Give people some meaningful benefits - not marketing fluff.
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