Face it: If you are seeking virtually any kind of professional role, it is imperative that you be on LinkedIn. It’s where you project your professional brand to be found and considered by the people who hire people like you.
[See: 10 Ways Social Media Can Help You Land a Job.]
But, beyond just being on LinkedIn, you have to make some serious strategic decisions about how you want to be viewed. Take these questions into account:
— Is your search public or surreptitious? If you are currently working, would you place yourself in jeopardy if your boss or human resources department found out that you are on the hunt for a new role?
— Do you want to broadcast the fact that you need a new job? Or, by doing that will you brand yourself as unemployed and desperate?
— Do you want to position yourself as someone who might be interested in a new position, but not actively looking for it? Or, by failing to let people know you are on a search, do you make yourself less visible to those who are sourcing and recruiting people like you?
How you answer these questions will have great bearing on what you put into your LinkedIn profile, what you post and what LinkedIn Groups you become active in. And in this article we explore how your answer to these questions may guide your decision of whether or not to upgrade your free account for a paid “Premium” membership plan.
[See: 25 Awesome Business Jobs for 2016.]
LinkedIn Premium vs. Free Account. There’s no doubt that even with a free account there is plenty you can do to take advantage of the social platform. You can put your profile out there, search for and apply to jobs, continually expand your network, access Groups and Company pages and more.
LinkedIn claims that Job Seeker Premium users get hired twice as fast as users without Premium. That may be true or not. Either way, it’s a broad generality that doesn’t necessarily apply to any given individual.
Yet, for $29.99 a month you’ll get added features like three InMails a month you can use to contact anyone on LinkedIn, even if you aren’t connected to them. When you consider particular jobs, it will give you a sense of how you stack up to other candidates who’ve applied through LinkedIn and give you access to LinkedIn’s learning videos (formerly Lynda, which it acquired).
But here’s what may or may not be a benefit: When you apply for a position, your application goes on the top of the list that the employer sees and you are branded as a “featured applicant.” There is a fair amount of disagreement among professional employment coaches whether this actually helps or hurts.
One side of the argument goes like this: It’s advantageous not to be coy about the fact that you are actively in a job search. Employers know that if they see you as a featured applicant you are literally making an investment in your own job search, you are likely to be serious about looking for a new position and you will likely be grateful for any opportunities you get to advance your career.
[See: The 8 Stages of a Winning Job Search.]
However, there is the flip side to the argument: If you are currently working, you’ll be seen as disloyal to your current employer if you’re discovered to be seeking employment elsewhere, even potentially to the point of casting a negative light on the employer. Employers in many instances have become instantly wary of such employees, and you risk facing dismissal.
And, if you aren’t working you’ll still be seen as being so active in searching for a job that the employer may feel it needs to worry about whether there will be multiple offers from other companies that may get in the way of bringing you on board. Alternatively, you might be seen as so desperate that there is some reason to question why other employers haven’t hired you already — as unfair as that conclusion may be.
Generally, this author recommends that you stay with the free account at least until you have optimized your profile, built something of a network and realize that you are bumping up against the edges of what you can do for free and can justify to yourself that the additional features will add immediate benefit to your job hunt.
Happy hunting!
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What Is the Best LinkedIn Account for You? originally appeared on usnews.com
