LinkedIn Learning Review – Is It Worth It

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Simon Mclellan

Writer, developer.

I assume you already know what LinkedIn is. If not, here’s what I think LinkedIn is. First of all, this is a place where you can find your dream job. In my opinion, it’s the number one platform for professional networking and job hunting.

In 2005, LinkedIn has acquired a learning platform which was called Lynda.com, which subsequently became renowned as the LinkedIn Learning.

Here are a couple of reasons why you may want to use the LinkedIn Learning platform:

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  • You are happy with your current job, but want to keep your skills sharp.
  • You don’t have a job, but you wish to find one – you need to keep your current skills up to date and learn new ones for your next job.
  • If you’re like me, who constantly want to learn something new just because you’re mindful and wishing to keep yourself educated.

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What is LinkedIn Learning and what makes it so great

By now, you have heard of LinkedIn. It’s the number one platform in the world for professional social networking. Socializing is just one half of the platform, another half is job searching, which is tightly coupled with the networking functionality. Having these two things in one place makes your job hunting and your professional career very effective. This is why it’s the number one platform for professionals.

LinkedIn Learning is another part that is seamlessly integrated with your LinkedIn profile, where you can improve your skills or learn new ones. This integration with the LinkedIn platform means, you will be able to earn badges by completing courses and show off your skills to your professional network, which in turn will increase your potential in finding a new job.

On LinkedIn Learning, you will find various courses covering three main groups, such as:

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  • Business
  • Creative
  • Technology

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All these groups have kind of three different learning directions:

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  • Subjects – this is almost like choosing an occupation, just a bit at a higher level. There are subjects like Career Development, Marketing, Finance and Accounting, Leadership and Management, Professional Development, Project Management, Sales and many more.
  • Software – regardless of what your occupation is, the software is used almost everywhere these days, so this is the way to go if you want to find courses about using specific technologies like Blender, Illustrator, Photoshop, Excel, Word, AutoCAD, Lightroom, InDesign and many more.
  • Learning Paths – this one is great when you are looking to transition into a new field, so you have a collection of courses that will help you with the transition. For example, if you’re looking to become an Agile software developer, or become a cloud developer, become an advanced WordPress developer. There are lots of other learning paths that are not related to software development, for example, you can learn to become an SEO expert, Digital Marketer, or you can even acquire skills to become a Manager!

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High-quality content

On LinkedIn Learning, I’ve found a lot of high-quality courses, although I couldn’t count them all, LinkedIn says they have more than 15k courses in 7 languages, including English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Mandarin, and Brazillian Portuguese.

Another good thing about the LinkedIn Learning platform is that you can also find many bite-sized videos for learning ‘in the moment’. This is useful, because sometimes you may have a single question which can be answered with this kind of bite-sized video, saving your time from fast-forwarding through some course just to find the exact one answer.

They also claim that they release 60+ new courses every week, which keeps this platform up to date.

Personalized recommendations

LinkedIn Learning thrives in this area. LinkedIn has over half a billion members on the platform (645+ million) and they can provide good personalized learning content to each employee based on their connections, what their peers are learning, and the right skills needed to succeed in their current job. From what I’ve seen on this learning platform, it’s got a very powerful personalized recommendation system.

As an organization, you can curate your learning paths and recommendation as an Admin. On top of that, you are also able to customize your organization’s learning experience by adding videos, documents, and links.

Social learning

It would be odd if there wouldn’t be any socialization functionality while learning new skills. The platform allows you to interact with experts, colleagues, and others who have taken a course, to share ideas and ask questions.

Apart from all that above, most courses include quizzes, exercise files, templates, and other supporting documents to help learners apply what they have learned.

Pricing – how much does LinkedIn Learning cost and is there a free trial

The LinkedIn Learning platform has subscription-based pricing. Let us talk through the personal subscription first and highlight how much does it cost and what’s included in the price.

So, as an individual, you have two payment options:

  1. Monthly payments – $33/month or £25/month or €29/month.
  2. Yearly payments – $26/month or £20/month or €23/month.

It’s cheaper to pay yearly and you will save about 20%.

LinkedIn Learning offers a free trial as well, so you can get a taste of what it’s like to use this platform. On both subscriptions, monthly or yearly, you get 1 month of a free trial.

What is included in the price

That’s a fair question. Here’s a list of features that will become available to you:

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  • Access 15k+ high-quality courses, created by the world’s leading experts.
  • Personalized course recommendation system.
  • You will be able to watch courses anytime on any device.
  • You will be earning a certificate when you complete a course. You will also be able to share the certificate on your LinkedIn profile.
  • Access exercise files and quizzes to help you practice with the material you’ve learned.
  • Use project files to practice while you learn.
  • You will be able to download courses to your mobile app for offline viewing.
  • Access LinkedIn’s Premium Career features. Premium Career subscription includes: InMail credits to reach out to recruiters and hiring managers, access to who’s viewed your profile, salary and job insights, and being a Featured Applicant when you apply to jobs.

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Course quality – are LinkedIn Learning courses good

In terms of the course quality, LinkedIn Learning courses are very similar to courses that are available on Pluralsight. I have seen many courses that were over 9 hours in length which is nothing but a good signal that the instructor goes into great detail.

Not always courses are that lengthy, sometimes you just need a short video to answer your specific question and this is something you can find on this platform too.

It would be silly to believe that all courses are of the same high quality – they are not. That entirely depends on the instructor and his/her experience in some specific field or subject. What I’ve noticed personally is that most of the courses are of decent quality.

Sometimes you may find yourself learning about something and feeling like there’s a gap in your knowledge. In this case, I wouldn’t blame some specific course that it’s not exhaustive or something like that, but rather try and fill in the gaps myself by searching for additional courses.

Most often, the learning paths will be handy for you which will guide you towards achieving new skills.

Course variety – what courses are on LinkedIn Learning

I have to admit that the LinkedIn Learning platform has some really interesting courses on offer. In this section, I will highlight some of the most popular courses in my opinion, in three areas: Business, Creative, and Technology.

Become a Successful Job Hunter

After going through this learning path, you will smash your job search, interviews, and career. You’ll get 13 hours of content which will boost up your knowledge in the area of job hunting.

Become a Successful Remote Worker

Remote working is one of the trendy things in business these days. Lots of various businesses are being started every month and very often there is a lack of professionals in local areas to fill in the positions within those businesses. This is where remote workers become handy. Remote working is also a skill you need to master.

Become a Technical Recruiter

Can you imagine how important Recruitment service is these days with such a high volume of new opportunities arising every day reaching thousands of candidates? Learn how you can become a technical recruiter and earn very generous commissions.

Become an SEO Expert

Search Engine Optimization, a combination of these three words is crucial for many businesses or any individual people who want to be visible on the Internet. You will learn how to think SEO and all other necessary information you need to know to become an SEO expert. This will require a lot of practice as well, to apply and strengthen your knowledge.

Become an Industrial Design CAD Technician

Learn and use industry-leading tools to advance your career as a CAD technician. CAD technicians earning between $48,000 and $82,000+. Don’t miss these courses.

Improve Your Drawing Skills

Drawing is an essential skill for working in a creative role. This learning path demonstrates ways you can refine, enhance, and enrich what you illustrate. Explore additional sketching techniques, working with perspective, factoring for light, rendering shadows, and more.

Become an Agile Software Developer

Sometimes the worst thing you can do is deliver the wrong product, perfectly. Agile practices help teams focus on delivering valuable and relevant products to customers. Learn the foundations, tips, and tricks for software project management and agile coding techniques in this learning path.

Advance Your Skills in the Blockchain

I have been thinking that I’m already late for learning this technology to create something really useful. Now I can see that I was never that much wrong about it. You can still learn about Blockchain and follow up on current trends related to it.

There were so many more courses that I wished to show you, but it’s just not possible to do that in this single post – it would have taken me ages. With these course highlights, I wanted to show you a couple of the most interesting courses to me in these three areas: Business, Creative, and Technology. I hope you found them to be interesting for yourself too.

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What is the User Experience like on LinkedIn Learning

If you have been using LinkedIn, then the LinkedIn Learning will feel very similar. In this section, I will give a brief overview of the user interface and how it feels to use the platform.

Once I get onto platforms like this, I like to first go and check the homepage. The first impression that I got while I was on the homepage, it looks more professional, rather than creative, like Skillshare. LinkedIn itself is a platform for professionals, so why would their learning platform look differently. Fair enough. That’s a screenshot from the homepage.

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Then, scrolling down you’ll have some sliders with courses in them, a.k.a. Suggested courses for you. For example:

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  • Trending Courses
  • Browse popular topics
  • Trending Spreadsheets Courses
  • Trending Data Analysis Courses
  • Trending Web Standards Courses
  • Trending short video tutorials
  • Trending Leadership Skills Courses

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Not always trending courses will reflect your interests, but it oftentimes will. I am not interested in the Spreadsheets for example, but if the LinkedIn Learning says that it’s trending, it means it is.

On the top of the homepage, you have two buttons:

  1. Get my free month – this will get you started as an individual user. So once you click on this button, you will be given two choices – how would you like to pay – monthly or yearly. So I chose Monthly and I was redirected to LinkedIn’s login page. I had an account already, so I just entered my email and password and clicked Sign In.
  2. Buy for my team – after clicking this button I was redirected to a page with the form in it. Which I would need to fill out if I were buying a subscription for my team in the company. I didn’t dare to continue with this, just for the sake to see what happens.

If you don’t have a LinkedIn account yet, you will need to create one. I had one, so I just logged in and I was prompted to enter my payment details. It’s the most annoying part, however, it’s almost everywhere these days, isn’t it. No worries, it’s a trustworthy platform, enter your card details. You won’t be charged if you won’t forget to cancel your membership before the free month ends if you don’t like the platform.

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Once you’ve entered your details and clicked ‘Start my free trial’, you will see a receipt with a total amount of £0.00 (or $0.00 or €0.00).

Before you can start learning, they will ask you another question to be able to provide you with personalized content. So make sure you mark everything that interests you in all categories. This way you’ll see the personalized content.

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Next and lastly, they will ask you (optionally) to set your weekly goals for learning. You can choose 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes per week. I chose 60. To be honest, I think it’s a nice little feature, but to become an expert and to master some skill, 60 or even 120 minutes a week dedicated to learning is a joke, otherwise, it will take you ages.

Of course, it may not always be true, because not all skills are equal. But I hope you get the idea.

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Now the most interesting part – watching some course. I have to admit that I was surprised by the user experience it gives. Like I said before, LinkedIn is a platform for professionals, LinkedIn Learning is no different. Its layout looks very professional and informative.

On the left, you got a video player, on the right, you got other things, like the following:

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  • Overview. This one is unique across all learning platform. It gives you information, such as where students of the course work (IBM, Accenture, Tata Consultancy Services, Amazon, Cognizant, etc.) and what their occupation is (Software Developer, Student, Research Fellow, etc.).
  • Contents. It’s a table of contents.
  • Q&A. This is where you can interact with other people who have taken this course. Ask questions yourself or answer their questions.
  • Transcripts. Transcripts from the video course.
  • Exercise files. Any supportive files from the course.
  • Notebook. You can write down your notes here.

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Other UI features

There are lots of other features available as well. I’d like to highlight two of them.

The first one is a mini dashboard on the home page of a logged-in user. It tracks how much time you have spent learning on the platform in the current week. It also shows how much time you had spent last week so you can compare the two.

I felt guilty for not spending any time on LinkedIn Learning last week. Sorry!

Another cool feature is an intuitive search system. It has an auto-complete functionality, so once you start typing in the search field, it instantly gives you suggestions of the related courses. I know it’s not an exceptional feature, but still, it’s good that it is there!

Let’s say you’ve searched for ‘C#’. You will be able to refine your search however you like:

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  • Type – you can choose whether you want to see courses, videos or learning paths.
  • Level – this is handy when you want to search for a specific level of courses. If you are a beginner, then you will probably want to see just the beginner level courses.
  • Time to complete – this is a nice search feature too. For example, you can search for courses that are less than 10 minutes in length. In this case, you will get just the matching parts of the courses, not the whole courses.
  • You then got other groupings: Software, Subjects & Topics and CEU.

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Can you become a LinkedIn Learning instructor

You can, but you will need to prove you’re worth it. To become a LinkedIn Learning instructor, you will need to fill in the application form and make a sample video. This will help the LinkedIn Learning team evaluate your teaching and delivery style. There are some guidelines for making this sample video, so if you want to become an instructor on the platform, you want to check them out.

Final thoughts

What I like about the LinkedIn Learning platform is that it’s tightly connected with LinkedIn. It enables the learning process to be much more related to actual jobs than any other platform could achieve.

When I watch courses on the LinkedIn Learning platform, I usually check the “Q&A” section as well, just to see what people are asking about and this helps me avoid some future questions I might have.

I can’t say it’s the best learning platform for everything, there’s no single platform that would check all the checkboxes. Just like any other learning platform, this one has its pros and cons too.