For a company that sells our data (If the product is free, the product is me...and you), LinkedIn offers Premium,.
One can send 5 messages for $40 USD with Premium...or use hunter.io, finding email addresses of people at companies for free. There are issues with that, but I have a free trial!
LinkedIn put forth effort to make the cost worthwhile, so let's see if the options are worth it.
How Much of LinkedIn's Revenue is Premium?
I couldn't tell, but COO Daniel Shapero says in 2024, it was a 1.7$ Billion dollar business. He raves about how Premium users like the AI Writing Suggestions tool - but hold that thought.
(On the payment page, it says "Why do we need your card for a free trial? To provide a seamless subscription experience!" It's so you forget to cancel the trial. To be fair, they do say they'll warn you 3 days before it expires, but we know what it's really about)
LinkedIn Learning
One part of LinkedIn I genuinely enjoy are the Learning Modules. The other part is groups, and those are wildly underused for how helpful they could be. Not everybody wants to use the 39,1472 sub-networking sites that die after 6 months!
But anyway.
Learning is a good way to get some certificates onto your profile - you can get 1 or 2 a week with proper engagement with the material.
Of course, AI is here, to undercut the hard work teachers provide and summarize the videos, likely by reading available transcripts. They're fairly accurate, but I'd like to see their accuracy with a video sans a transcript (Which I could not easily find -Thank you, LinkedIn Learning Teachers, for the accessibility).
There was an AI Role-Play scenario in a course about communication I took. You can even adjust the personality of the AI agent;
When you've finished, the AI will judge you.
Acknowledge people's efforts!
This is a good use of AI. You get quick feedback - but it's about a human situation.
I'm always aware of using AI - Who suffers from this? Who loses their income? Who is subjected to reading that insincere message?
People are becoming more acutely aware of their networks and neighbors losing income and struggling, and are pushing back on anything that could undermine a human's work.
Did the course instructors feed this AI their insights, their data and findings over years? I talked with a resume writer who was open about using AI and LLM tools - but it was trained on his own work over a decade. That's fine with me.
When you finish the role play, there's no easy way to return to the course you were in. You can share a course for free but it is a seperate option outside the ordinary "Yay I did it!" post prompt.
I did enjoy the "Azure Infrastructure as Code with ARM, Bicep, Terraform, and Pulumi" course by Mike Benkovitch.
AI Job Searching Tools
Recall that AI Writing Suggestions tool I mentioned earlier - The writing assistant is apparently not popular. I suppose LinkedIn users want their inauthentic, repetitive messages crafted by a human hand instead of a robot.
I do think the "Am I a fit for this role" comparison where a robot looks at your profile (My bet is it looks at your skills and looks for the same keywords in the JD) and says yes or no is helpful.
I clicked career insights; It did show me the number of Cloud Engineer jobs posted on LinkedIn in a week (6936), and also the following;
"Companies where this role is in demand" it lists three "Companies" - Lensa, Jobs via Dice,and ClearanceJobs. These aren't companies hiring, but aggregate sites, third parties that collect job listings - much like LinkedIn.
Changing the job role to Cloud Specialist is more accurate;
Deloitte is indeed a company.
But the tantalizing four-point star in gold encourages you gently to rewrite your resume to better align with the job description!
It takes your uploaded resume and reformats it. Then you click another four-point star and go through a standard rewriting of words; However, it only focuses on 3 bullet points of my experience - and not even sequential bullet points.
The resume looks like this (Legible text is what the AI picked up).
I've done more than that!
Trying it again gets more sequential results, but then it erases the other bullet points it doesn't use in its draft. Is it comparing my experience to the job description and only allowing bullets that align? Is there clarity about this somewhere, or is it another reason why AI is not replacing humanity any time soon?
The resulting resume seemed scant; We don't want to bore a recruiter, but it only had 3 bullet points.
It also had the major downside of listing my location. Don't give employers a chance to say 'no' before the interview, especially when remote roles are not going away and workers are regaining their power - there has been a 2% increase of office workers (and probably less than that who get a desk).
There is an AI 'job matching' feature that's hit or miss, and it shows you how many people applied (Or clicked apply);
This particular role is a misnomer; It's been posted in various forms for about 3 months, so that thankfully isn't over 4000 people in two days.
Finally, let's see the "Let AI Write Your Headline and Summary" feature;
My original headline:
5+ Year Cloud Engineer | Educating @ runtcpip.com | AWS & Azure | Currently managing PostGRES databases in Docker | Writing blogs and books
The suggestion:
Cloud Engineer @ Lucas Tech Consulting | Automating Cloud Infrastructure
No blog URL, no keywords, just the facts. I pass. Let's go to the summary;
Original:
Cloud Engineer with 5 years of experience specializing in cloud
infrastructure automation using Terraform, AWS, and Azure. I have done
per-project work, which is in a portfolio, I earned a most-expenses paid
trip to Grace Hopper Convention in 2019 because of my portfolio, and
been featured in articles about computer networking. I've made videos
that explain products that have educated over 59,000 people + gotten
that company's attention (with a cute LEGO to prove it).
Bullet points:
∘ Reduced errors by 75% by automating security policies with tfsec for AWS S3 buckets and EC2 instances.
∘ Used Terraform (AWS, Azure), Cloud Formation (AWS), and Azure Bicep to create infrastructure that talks to each other
∘ Collaborated to teach over 59,000 people via YouTube about logging with AWS CloudWatch, DataDog, and NewRelic.
∘ Made chili oil in my rice cooker.
🟢 Portfolio: runtcpip.com for cloud work, and runtcpip.blogspot.com for a variety of topics about tech and culture.
Contact me to work for you: Here or at [removed]
Open to work anywhere on - or off - earth.
-> Most posts are scheduled.
People really like the chili oil bit. Let's see how LinkedIn wants to strip away my individuality even more than white collar work demands of us.
As a Cloud Engineer with over five years of experience at Lucas Tech Consulting, I specialize in cloud infrastructure automation, leveraging tools like Terraform and CloudFormation on AWS and Azure to enhance operational efficiency and reduce errors. Our team successfully automated processes, cutting errors by 75%, and implemented robust Azure setups, including VM configurations, security rules, and disaster recovery architectures.
My work also extends to database management, where we restored and optimized Aurora PostgreSQL environments. Beyond technical contributions, I create educational content to empower others, with videos on tools like DataDog and AWS Insights reaching over 59,000 viewers. Driven by a passion for technology and knowledge-sharing, I aim to bridge complex concepts with accessible learning resources and scalable cloud solutions.
Better. Not as fun, but shorter. I took one line and edited into my existing description.
Messaging
Want to message someone? You can only message 5 people, and they may not respond. That's not Premium's fault.
I was initially not going to bother with the 5 InMail credits, but the fair option is to use the service and find someone active to mail. For the sake of this test, it won't be to get an "informational interview" or "job", but simply to receive a response.
To give LI Premium a fighting chance, I looked for people who had posted a comment or post within the past week, no CEOs or CIOs.
And there it is, the "Write with AI *twinkly star*" button below. Let's see what it gives me when I've written nothing;
Redacted the names of connection and person and company.
[alt:
Hi [REDACTED],
I hope you are having a great week! I’m Morgan ☁.
I admire your mission to create a more equal world by enabling companies to [JARGON].
I noticed that we both know [REDACTED], and it's exciting to connect with someone who shares that commonality.
Thank you for considering my message! I would appreciate any insights or advice you can share about [REDACTED].
Best,
Morgan ☁]
It doesn't flow, it seems out of order. I would thank someone last, and ask about their work in the second paragraph. I would be unlikely to mention that we're both connected to the same person.
I can see why very few people find "value" here.
I tried again but with my own message;
Howdy, [REDACTED].
My name is Morgan; I work in Cloud Engineering and wanted to ask you about your experience working with [REDACTED].
No need for a phone call.
Thanks for any insight.
Morgan.
And told LinkedIn Premium to make it casual;
[alt:
Hi [REDACTED],
I’m Morgan, and I work in Cloud Engineering. I’d love to hear about your experience with [REDACTED].
No need for a call; just any insights you can share would be great.
Thanks so much!
Best,
Morgan.]
Not bad, but it's nothing I didn't do myself. I feel one could go to Perplexity AI and give it a bit more context, but I'd rather add human touches.
I sent a message that congratulated them on their new role in the same company, pointed out what I think it means ("flexibility to improve hiring processes"), and reaffirmed that this was not an attempt at a call and thanked them for their time.
I can also use one of my limited InMail credits to harass follow up.
(I did have the "Open messages" option open. Got 2 clearly spam messages.)
Stats:
InMail Credits:5
Credits Used: 4
Responses: 2
"Open Messages Received: 2
# that weren't spam: 0
No one's entitled to a response, but Premium has limited value when it relies on other people and you have limited credits.
I retooled my outreach after getting feedback and received 2 messages.
Is LinkedIn Premium worth it?
No....and it's not the fault of the service. You can tell the team really tried hard to add value to Premium over years, but it all depends on what you want from it. Even if it had greater value, I wouldn't feel okay funding a site that has finally stopped pretending that they care about inclusion and equality.
I am disinterested in whatever "Let's clear up some misinformation" PR campaign they may release; LinkedIn has a history of stifling inclusive initiatives by users.
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