Linkedin Premium: is it worth $39.95 a month?

That is more or less insane.

First, they are not even an original site, they are basically a poor Facebook imitation. They just do not have the services, fame, or value to be asking such a high price. Honestly, $9.99 a month would still seem incredibly expensive, specially when you consider how much you can buy with $9.99 a month.

Ok, if you are a big powerful wall street broker o high profile criminal defense lawyer, and you can some how manage all your important contacts on it, then it could have a pinch of merit, but it still would not be offering you anything you can’t already get free some other place.

For $40 a month, I would rather just say to myself, that it is about 500 bucks for a year, then assume I am going to be doing business for at least 2 years, and set myself a 1000 dollar budget to hire a website developer, and make myself a big online resume, with its own news letters, log in systems, and all the other bells and whistles.

They don’t have much fame yet other than USA and UK, the contacts they offer don’t really have all that much value, even though some of them are important people, they will never talk to you, $40 buck a month member or not, and lastly, their site is just not good, it does not feel like quality.

For $40 a month, they are going to have to include more features, maybe an extensive list of good jobs that are exclusive to them, or something, because $40 for what it is now, is just insulting to anyone who buys in to it, as they are more or less saying you have to have more money than brains to want it.

None of the professionals I know use Linkedin. Does anyone take the site seriously?

@glacial No one I do takes it seriously. We use it, but I only check it about once every couple months. I’m still waiting for the message- “You are the perfect candidate for our position based on your profile and recommendations, are you interested?”

The industry I am in has been through a lot of changes and migration to automation over the last ten years. The company I worked for was bought in 2005 and everyone here signed up for LinkedIn to network. As the business has changed, then number of people on LinkedIn from my industry has exploded.

But the site seem s to get worse very month. I’ve had a half dozen invites from people I have no connection with and no clue as to who they are. And LinkedIn makes it hard to reject people! The only button on the invite emails is “Accept”.

So while I still am listed there, I won’t buy the premium service. That would be like paying for AOL.

It is barely worth the free price, I have found it pretty useless.

I’ve heard that recruiters and HR folks (in charge of hiring) love it. I think the average person finds it mildly annoying.

Not to me.

I have also heard recruiters use it @phaedryx. I don’t know if that’s universal or in particular fields.

I recently had to sign up for ‘premium’ because it was the only way to contact someone I really wanted to write to and I couldn’t find their email/telephone info elsewhere. Thank you for reminding me to cancel the contract now I have reached the person I needed. I have no other use for the ‘premium’ option.

@KNOWITALL No doubt. The only time I am reminded of their existence is when someone asks a question like this or when I get spammed with one person’s invitations for a week.

Egh I hate LinkedIn’s existence. For weeks on end my gmail was just flooded with invitations to join LinkedIn from people I’ve never heard of.

LinkedIn is a farce… I found myself listed there without me creating the entry, and with old data showing. Google is free and have always relied on it to mine data that I need.

GAs to all. Exactly what I felt, right down to the flood of invitations to link to people I’ve never heard of. I listed with it and linked to my Web site back before Google’s Panda update made the value of such an unreciprocated inbound link ZERO. Google has the right idea.

I pay $29.95/mo for the job seeker basic plan, but I am looking for a job and would pay for the service if I was not looking. I do get more recruiter calls with the “Job Seeker” badge than without it, but not sure it’s worth $30/month.

Linkedin is pretty valuable for me, but in my husband’s industry, it is not very used very often. In my line of work, it would be considered odd not to have a profile and would definitely be seen as a red-flag by potential employers (old fashioned, no tech skills, etc.)