A LinkedIn premium account unlocks a host of useful features and benefits that can help take your professional networking and career growth to the next level. With a premium account, you get access to powerful tools for finding jobs, connecting with key contacts, building your personal brand, and gaining valuable insights into your industry.
Expanded search capabilities
One of the biggest perks of upgrading to a premium LinkedIn account is gaining access to advanced search filters and preferences. With a free account, you can only search by keyword, location, company, school, and title. Premium accounts let you narrow your searches further by filtering for years of experience, company size, when a profile was last updated, and more.
Premium also enables you to save your favorite searches and be alerted whenever new profiles matching your criteria pop up. This makes it much easier to connect with relevant professionals in your target companies or roles.
InMail messages
Premium LinkedIn members can send direct InMail messages to anyone on LinkedIn, even if they’re not in your network. This allows you to reach out to key decision makers, recruiters, and potential collaborators who would otherwise be inaccessible.
InMail messages bypass the “connect first” limitation of basic LinkedIn messaging. They have higher response rates since they appear directly in the recipient’s inbox. With a premium account, you get a set number of InMails per month depending on your subscription level.
Who’s viewed your profile
Ever wonder which recruiters, coworkers, or peers have been quietly checking you out on LinkedIn? Premium members can see the last 90 days of visitors to their profile.
Knowing who’s viewed you recently can reveal opportunities to follow up and connect with professionals who already have interest. It’s also great for identifying if your profile is attracting your target audience.
Salary data
LinkedIn Premium provides access to detailed salary data for various job titles and companies. You can research the pay range for positions you’re interested in to benchmark reasonable salary requirements.
The salary tool compiles data points from millions of member profiles. It offers personalized insights based on your location, experience level, skills, and other profile details. Understanding pay norms can help you negotiate fair compensation.
Profile badges
Premium members can display badges on their profile highlighting sought-after skills, achievements, and certifications. Badges serve as visual verification that you possess credentials like project management (PMP), coding languages (Python), and other qualifications.
Prominent skill badges make it easy for recruiters and contacts to quickly identify your capabilities. You can add customizable badges for volunteer work, publications, patents, and more.
Expanded profile views
Having an “All-Star” profile on LinkedIn boosts your visibility and credibility during networking and job searching. Premium accounts let you see more profile views to understand how your profile is resonating.
You’ll gain insights into who’s engaging with your content and the types of positions and industries they work in. These analytics help you tailor your profile content and outreach for maximum impact.
Learning courses
LinkedIn Learning comes free with premium accounts, unlocking thousands of expert-led courses covering popular software, creative, business, and technology skills. Premium members get unlimited access to the full course library.
The courses are a great way to pick up in-demand hard and soft skills and “level up” your capabilities. Completing courses also looks impressive on your profile. Premium lets you highlight courses directly on your profile.
Job insights
Premium subscribers gain exclusive data on job postings, pay, and regional hiring trends across different industries. The job insights tool aggregates data from millions of listings to show salary ranges, top skills employers want, and how you stack up.
Having access to rich data on hiring and compensation empowers more informed career planning and pivots. You can see which sectors and locations offer the most jobs and pay in your target field.
Job Insights Data
| Industry | Average Salary | Top In-Demand Skills | Current Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technology | $100,000 | Python, JavaScript, Cloud Engineering | 15,000 |
| Healthcare | $75,000 | Nursing, Healthcare Administration, Electronic Health Records | 12,000 |
| Finance | $85,000 | Financial Analysis, Accounting, Auditing | 10,000 |
Larger network
Premium LinkedIn members can grow their networks up to 30,000 1st-degree connections, compared to just 10,000 connections for free accounts. Building a larger personal network unlocks more opportunities to engage with relevant professionals.
You’ll be able to send more connection requests, join more industry and interest-based groups, and maximize the number of professionals you can reach out to. Premium also removes current connection limits for Team Accounts.
More search filters
In addition to the expanded search filters mentioned earlier, premium accounts also gain access to targeting content by date, engagement, likes, comments, and more. You can locate the most recent and popular posts matching your search terms.
Advanced filters allow drilling down to the most timely and relevant content published across LinkedIn. This helps cut through the noise to find content that can inform and inspire you.
Larger InMail buckets
Depending on your Premium subscription tier, you get an expanded number of InMails per month to reach out to non-connections. The Professional tier includes 25 InMails per month, while Executive accounts get 125 InMails monthly.
More InMail credits enable connecting with morepotential clients, mentors, partners, and talents per month without restrictions. InMail response rates are also very high, above 40% on average.
InMail Buckets by Tier
| Subscription Tier | # of InMails per Month |
|---|---|
| Basic | 0 |
| Premium | 5 |
| Professional | 25 |
| Executive | 125 |
Expanded analytics
Premium provides richer analytics on profile visitors, content engagement, and search appearance. You gain transparency into which types of professionals engage with you and your posts.
The analytics dashboard compiles data on your audience’s seniority, industry, location, company size, and more. You get a comprehensive picture of your reach and impact.
Selective profile visibility
For privacy or other reasons, premium members can selectively exclude certain connections from seeing their full profile. You can limit visibility for specific individuals without removing them from your network.
This helps you control which contacts can see your full work history, education, skills, recommendations etc. Excluding contacts from seeing your full profile is not possible on free accounts.
Unlimited profile recommendations
Positive profile recommendations from coworkers, clients, managers etc. enhance how recruiters and contacts perceive you. Premium accounts remove the three recommendation maximum imposed on free profiles.
This flexibility allows showcasing an unlimited number of endorsements to highlight positive feedback from your network. The more recommendations you have, the more credible your skills and qualifications appear.
| Account Type | Max Recommendations |
|---|---|
| Basic | 3 |
| Premium | Unlimited |
Zero ads
One of the biggest draws of upgrading to premium is removing ads from LinkedIn. This produces a cleaner, distraction-free experience focused on networking and career growth.
Premium members see no banner, sidebar, or sponsored content ads anywhere on LinkedIn. Less clutter and targeted sales pitches make for smoother site navigation and reading.
Larger saved item limit
Saving key posts, articles, profiles, jobs, companies, and content you find valuable on LinkedIn is a great way to organize professional intelligence and opportunities. Premium accounts can save 200 items versus just 25 for basic members.
The expanded limit provides ample space to bookmark content for future reference. Curating and accessing a larger vault of knowledge helps fuel smarter career management.
| Account Type | Individual Items Saved |
|---|---|
| Basic | 25 |
| Premium | 200 |
Team learning & insights
With enterprise team subscriptions, administrators gain access to powerful analytics for their company plus earning credits redeemable for LinkedIn Learning courses. This facilitates upskilling employees.
Premium also unlocks aggregated team data like top skills, shared connections, employee engagement levels, and dream companies team members want to work for.
Conclusion
While you can get value from the free version, upgrading to a premium LinkedIn account opens up game-changing networking and recruiting capabilities. For individuals, premium grants robust tools to find the right job, build connections, gain industry intel, and present an “all-star” professional image.
For organizations and teams, premium provides analytics to identify skill gaps and strengths while enabling enterprise-wide learning. The expanded features and perks easily justify the subscription cost for serious professional networkers and HR managers.
