LinkedIn Could Make A Stronger Appeal To The Active Job Seeking Student Tribe

With three months of the MBA program remaining, I am on active job search. I got my second job, which was my dream destination, through networking. Hopefully, networking will help me this time as well. I love the job of building and executing a marketing strategy for self J

Like millions of professionals, I have hired “LinkedIn Basics” to help me do the job of networking. To be specific, I want LinkedIn to connect me with the decision makers whom I can’t connect through email because I don’t have their email addresses! Further, I want to reach out to as many such people as possible. Networking is a probability game. People whom I want to reach out are busy and may not reply. Therefore, if I am restricted by the number of connections I can make, my job is not done.

That is why I am not hiring the LinkedIn paid service http://www.linkedin.com/subscriptionv2?displayProducts=&trk=home_level

Because of two reasons I don’t find current pricing options useful:

1)      Out of the twelve features listed for the paid services, for an active job seeker like me, only the first matters the most: sending InMails. But none of the three packages fulfills my need. Basic ($25.95 /month), Business Plus ($50.96/month) and Executive ($100.95/month) allow me to send 3, 10 and 25 InMails per month respectively. These are not enough. I don't want to be restricted.
2)      There is a time period during which someone becomes an active job seeker and needs to send unlimited InMails. I have a LinkedIn profile since 2007. But, I am an active job seeker since December 2011 and will hopefully close a deal by May 2012. This is the time period when I am on LinkedIn for hours. I need to send unlimited InMails during this period. I would not be in hyper active on LinkedIn for ever.

Based on above, I would look for a package like the following from LinkedIn:

• Fixed contract for 6 months.
• Unlimited InMails. I can get my job done without the remaining eleven features.
• Price should be something much lesser than $600. ($600 is the cost to me for maintaining the Executive Account for 6 months. Executive account is the package which allows maximum number of InMails.)
• Since I am not using the other eleven features of the premium package, LinkedIn should compensate me.Pricing should also consider demand elasticity. Students are likely to be on a tight budget!

A significant proportion of the jobseekers are students. Every year thousands of new students will enter the system. LinkedIn could achieve a strong penetration in this stable market, thrash the competitors and win a loyal customer tribe (active job seeking students).

It is not that LinkedIn does not have competitors. I believe following are LinkedIn’s competitors: Facebook, Google+, networking events and company information sessions in schools, career trips, real and natural social networking through friends and relatives, Toastmasters club and last but not the least, passiveness of customers because of unaffordability.