As an avid user of (the free version of) LinkedIn, I’ve been wondering – is LinkedIn Premium worth it for immigration professionals? So I upgraded to LinkedIn Premium to fully test it out. Here are my thoughts on using LinkedIn Premium so far, especially from the perspective of LinkedIn Premium for immigration professionals.
Now that I’ve used LinkedIn Premium, I can say that there were some features that were extremely helpful to have as an immigration professional. In particular, two features were useful to me right away:
Why LinkedIn premium for immigration professionals is worth it: seeing who’s looked at my profile
Firstly, LinkedIn Premium lets you see everyone who looks at your profile even if LinkedIn shows them as ‘anonymous’ when you use the free version of LinkedIn. Being able to see EVERYONE who had looked at my profile rather than just the last 1-3 with the free version was really beneficial because I could monitor who was coming to my profile, especially after I posted content.
Why LinkedIn premium for immigration professionals is worth it: having access to LinkedIn Learning
The second feature that I loved is having access to all the LinkedIn learning modules. LinkedIn Premium gives you access to some fantastic educational resources (the LinkedIn Learning modules were originally from Lynda Courses and moved to LinkedIn if you have taken a class from that platform.) If you’re looking to polish up on some of your business skills or learn a new one, LinkedIn Premium is great just for LinkedIn Learning. They have courses for every kind of interest including project management, Microsoft Office, coding, and digital marketing, etc. I plan to binge all sorts of videos during this month.
One of the major benefits here of LinkedIn premium for immigration professionals, especially those starting a new law firm or tech startup or virtually any other business in the industry, is access to business-focused information that you would likely not come across at an industry conference. To me, this is a huge plus.
Why LinkedIn premium is NOT woth it:
There were a few other features on LinkedIn Premium that I tried out during my trial membership that wasn’t particularly helpful. Here are the two features I don’t think I’ll need and why they’re not useful to me:
InMail credits
LinkedIn Premium offers a feature called “InMail credits” which is the ability to message people who are not in your LinkedIn network (aka not already connected with.) Since I’ve started the Premium trial, I haven’t used this as I’ve found that I haven’t needed to send a message to anyone outside of my network. I might use it in the future to test it out but so far I can say that this hasn’t been something I would use if I had LinkedIn Premium.
Salary Insights
LinkedIn Premium also offers subscribers “Salary insights.” This is a tool that offers salary breakdown by job title, industry, and location. This is a super helpful tool to have for a lot of people but … because I run my own immigration tech startup and creative agency, salaries aren’t too helpful or something that I need to know about right now.
Is LinkedIn Premium worth it? Here’s my opinion, and I’d love to hear your opinion!
I’ve been researching LinkedIn Premium for quite some time but most importantly, and I have some thoughts about it, especially as a former immigration lawyer and currently the founder of two business focused on the immigration and global mobility industry.
In general, I think unless you have an aggressive outbound sales strategy (where you cold-call / reach out to prospective clients), if you’re recruiting, or if you’re looking for a job, LinkedIn Premium is overly expensive and doesn’t come with enough benefits.
Frankly, the most valuable thing to me was seeing who had checked my profile since it allowed me to potentially connect with people who already expressed some level of interest in me by visiting my profile. I thought that LinkedIn Learning would be more valuable, but I honestly just didn’t have the time to sit through dozens of hours of video courses. I assume others feel the same way I do, which is why I discount this otherwise highly valuable perk.
Have you tried LinkedIn Premium or do you use it regularly? I’d love to hear from some of you folks who use Premium or maybe used it in the past if you’d be willing to share your thoughts or advice. Leave a comment below, or join me and hundreds of other immigration and global mobility professionals on the free GMI Rocket Slack community and let us know what you think of LinkedIn Premium!
