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LinkedIn Learning is an online course platform that offers classes to increase your skills and help you earn certifications. This helps further your knowledge and skillset to make you more marketable during your job search. Managers will hire based on skills a candidate possesses so you can develop the skills required for the roles you covet through more than 15,000 expert-led courses offered by LinkedIn Learning. 

One course we highly recommend is LinkedIn’s 1-hour long “Rock Your Profile” course. Your LinkedIn profile is part of your personal brand. Created by LinkedIn, this course teaches you how to bring your personal career story to life and provides tips about what’s important to include in your headline and in the about, experience, skills, recommendations, accomplishments, and interests sections. 

Who better to teach you how to create a stellar LinkedIn profile than the platform itself :) Here’s a list of recommendations on the best courses to update your technical skills, whether you want to be a developer, programmer, video editor, graphic designer, or project manager. LinkedIn Learning has courses for everyone including those who want more proficiency in Microsoft Office, GDPR Compliance, and Scrum, or those who want better communications skills, to exude more executive presence, or who need help with time management.

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Here are a few topics of the 15,000+ courses that are offered on LinkedIn:

Business Courses:
Data Analysis, Business Strategy, Data Visualization, CRM Software, Accounting Software, Corporate Finance, Talent Management, Diversity and Inclusion, Recruiting, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Project Management Skills, Project Management Software, Agile Project Management

Creative Courses:
UX Design, Design Thinking, User Interface Prototyping, Typography, Image Editing, Illustration, Drawing, Web Graphics, Video Editing, Video Production, 3D Modeling, 3D Animation, Music Production, Music Business, Architectural Design, BIM

Technology Courses:
Front-End Web Development, Back-End Web Development, JavaScript Frameworks, Full-Stack Web Development, Programming Languages, Database Development, Machine Learning, DevOps Tools, Agile Software Development, iOS Development, Mobile Game Development

Another useful benefit of LinkedIn Premium is its Applicant Insights, which LinkedIn calls “competitive intelligence against other applicants.” Applicant Insights includes:

• How you are a match to the top 10 skills the job poster wants in a candidate

• In which percentile of applicants you are (based on skills and job description match)

• How many other people have applied and the breakdown of their educational background (percentage with bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees) and seniority levels (number of entry, senior, manager, director, and VP level applicants) 

• Salary information about different career paths (without having to provide your own salary)

• Information about the company (number of employees and their median tenure, percentage of company-wide growth over two years and production over two years, which schools and companies the employer has hired from, employee distribution and headcount growth by function, total job openings, and breakdown of the number of new hires by month).

Having Applicant Insights can help your job search because it provides guidance on if you’re a good fit for the job, have a better than average shot of getting an interview and possibly the job, and if the pay scale fits in your ideal salary range. As a LinkedIn Premium member, you can take advantage of these insights to improve your job search.

LinkedIn says their InMail Messaging is “2.6x more effective than email alone” and this is because somewhere between 87% and 95% of recruiters used LinkedIn to find and communicate with qualified candidates. Through InMail Messaging, you can message recruiters and others to whom you are not connected, which will speed up your job search. You can also reach out to other people (think alumni and former colleagues you aren’t connected to) to get connected and for referrals. 

Applying for a job online isn’t the best job search tactic in 2021 since sometimes your resume is never read by humans. More than fifty-five million companies are on LinkedIn with more than 14 million open jobs; your best bet to land one of those jobs may still be a human connection and you can do that most easily through LinkedIn InMail Messaging.

LinkedIn Premium also provides its members with personal insights regarding who has accessed your profile in the past 90 days (so you can then reach out to them, especially if it has been a recruiter peeping at your profile), recommendations as to which jobs you’d be a top applicant, suggestions on how to find people and get found by people, how to improve your resume with a keyword insights function (to help your resume pass application tracking software (called ATS). And there is even a section exclusively for Premium members on interviewing.  You can have access to all of these insights only if you’re a member of LinkedIn Premium.