Should You Get a LinkedIn Premium Account?
If you’ve spent any time on LinkedIn, you’ve undoubtedly seen people with little golden LinkedIn logos on their profiles. Those are people with LinkedIn Premium accounts. Sure they may look cool, but are LinkedIn Premium accounts worth the money for aspiring cybersecurity professionals?
LinkedIn already offers a lot of resources with basic accounts for free. When considering paying for a premium account, it’s important to recognize what you’re trying to achieve. Then you can weigh the cost and benefits.
Networking is a key function in discovering opportunities for your first cybersecurity job. Basic LinkedIn resources are generally adequate. However, a LinkedIn Premium account will provide you with benefits which are largely worth the cost.
LinkedIn Premium Costs
There are four types of LinkedIn Premium subscriptions. Fortunately, the subscription intended for job hunters—Premium Career—is the most affordable of them. In the United States the Premium Career subscription will run you $29.99 per month. Admittedly, that’s not cheap, but is half the price of the next most inexpensive subscription, Premium Business.
When considering paying for a premium account, it’s important to recognize what you’re trying to achieve.
LinkedIn offers a complimentary month, so that monthly Premium Career subscription can be a good way to get a feel for LinkedIn Premium and determine if it's worth the cost for you. You can save 33% by paying annually, but you can switch to annual payment at any given time. The monthly subscription is therefore still a good place to start.
Benefits of LinkedIn Premium Career
Networking and building relationships among cybersecurity professionals is vital to your transition to a cybersecurity career. By definition this involves reaching out to people you don’t know. It leaves you with the question of how to contact people you don’t know on LinkedIn? After all, the platform put restrictions on that for basic accounts.
Networking is a key function in discovering opportunities for your first cybersecurity job.
Some people opt to simply send connection requests to strangers hoping they’ll be accepted. There’s certainly a population of people, who will accept any connection request sent their way. For many people though, it’s considered poor etiquette.
LinkedIn Premium allows you to use InMail to message people outside of your network. This is huge, because it allows you to intentionally engage with people outside of your personal network. A thoughtfully written message is preferred to a random LinkedIn connection request. If you do it right, today’s LinkedIn message will be tomorrow’s LinkedIn connection.
Additional benefits to the Premium Career subscription are Job Insights to LinkedIn job posts, interview preparation, access to LinkedIn Learning courses, a Resume Builder, and greater transparency on who’s viewed your profile in the last 90 days. These are all bonuses. The ability to message people outside of your network will be the single greatest benefit for aspiring cybersecurity professionals building their networks in the community. It can have tangible benefits for aspiring professionals.
LinkedIn offers U.S. service members and veterans a free 1-year Premium Career subscription in collaboration with ID.me.
Way Forward
Networking is an important part of finding your first cybersecurity job and LinkedIn is the premier social media site upon which to do so. You can certainly network using a basic LinkedIn account. This may be adequate, if your network includes a number of people already working in cybersecurity. Otherwise, a LinkedIn Premium Career account can be a good, near-term investment to start making cybersecurity connections outside of your network. Step up your online networking to help find your first cybersecurity job.
