Is LinkedIn premium actually premium?
November 17, 2011 1:43 PM   Subscribe

Are any premium job search services (i.e. LinkedIn Premium) worth it?

I have looked at The Ladders and LinkedIn Premium, amongst others and have heard mixed reviews when poking around the web. Wondering what the well informed folks of Metafilter think.

For what its worth this is in the Northeast, I have my MBA and am in marketing, Manager/Director level.
posted by IzzeYum to Work & Money (9 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I've heard terrible things about The Ladders at the Ask a Headhunter blog (not because he's plugging himself).
posted by maurreen at 1:51 PM on November 17, 2011


In my experience, LinkedIn Premium wasn't worth it. I signed up primarily for the "featured applicant" status. However, the majority of jobs I found on LinkedIn weren't accepting applications through the site. Of the handful of jobs I was able to apply for on LinkedIn, only one application was actually read! I had also hoped that being able to see who had viewed my profile (with my profile-viewing remaining anonymous) would be worthwhile, but over time, it was clear there wasn't a correlation between my applications and who was looking at my LinkedIn page. Now that I'm back to a basic account, the only feature I miss is the ability to view everyone's full profile.
posted by serialcomma at 1:55 PM on November 17, 2011


I'm just advertising for a job on LinkedIn (in the NE, for marketing... MeMail me!) and the bright yellow featured box at the top does make us look at those candidates first, but by far the bigger thing that stands out to me is a decent cover letter - I can't believe how few people took the time to at least relate their resume to our position. So I would say from the other side, it's certainly one way to get a potential emplyer's attention, but there are others.

I just remembered that there is a jobs site here. Away I go!
posted by ukdanae at 2:22 PM on November 17, 2011


Nope. The thing about anything where people are searching for a candidate/tenant/whatever is they WANT you to find them.

So any apartment you can find on Westside Rentals, the big pay service in L.A., you can also find on Craigslist. Because why on Earth would they want to keep away people who want to rent from them?? Same goes for jobs, in my experience.
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:43 PM on November 17, 2011


Don't throw your money away on Ladders. Its job postings too closely resemble the fake jobs posted by recruiters looking to collect resumes and contacts. On the rare occasion you get called, it will most likely be along the lines of: "The job has been filled; you are overqualified anyway; know any less qualified people I can contact for the other (crappy, junior, non-100K) job I need to fill?" In my experience with them, I had one legitimate call from an application submitted through the site but many time-wasting ones.

It is believed (and this is hearsay at my end) that the Ladders aggregates jobs from other job posting systems without regard to level, pay or quality -- which is precisely what it claims it does not do. Given my observations and experience, this is plausible.

I have also noted a recent trend in job-search land: recruiters trying to charge job seekers for an online look at the jobs they claim to be trying to fill. Which is to say, they are trying to get paid at both ends: from the employer client for whom they screen applicants as well as from the potential applicant pool (a large chunk of which is ever more desperate and probably easy marks for such scams). IvyExec.com and women@worknetwork.com are two such.

(Note: I have never met a recruiter I would hire -- to wit, pay -- to help me find a job. In my work experience, I've never found a job through one (probably because I'm not easily typecast into a neat little box). And when I'm on the hiring side, I rarely use them as I'm better at finding good people than they are -- and I'm not, and never was, an HR person.)

As always, YMMV.
posted by cool breeze at 2:50 PM on November 17, 2011


This probably depends a lot on what field you're in and whether you're trying to find a job, or find candidates to fill a job. In my field, nearly everyone has a (free) LinkedIn account. They wait around for recruiters to contact them, ignore the lame ones (stealth-mode startup seeks "rockstar" developers!), and occasionally respond to people from interesting companies. I would imagine the recruiters probably have premium accounts, but the engineers they're trying to recruit generally don't.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 2:55 PM on November 17, 2011


My personal experience is that that the premium services on LinkedIn are more valuable for recruiters than job seekers, but we use them more for gathering intel than actually recruiting.
posted by sm1tten at 3:52 PM on November 17, 2011


2ndig the negative opinion on The Ladders. I got nothing from the premium Ladders account when I was unemployed earlier this year.
posted by COD at 4:07 PM on November 17, 2011


Response by poster: Thanks for all your input.

+1 to tylerkaraszewski for the "rockstar" comment. If I see "rock star" or "red bull attitude" one more time I am going to hurl.
posted by IzzeYum at 5:42 AM on November 18, 2011


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