Free tools Windows power users keep installed
One-click scans. No signup required.
LinkedIn is a professional networking platform where you can present your work history and skills, find jobs and people, connect with colleagues, follow organizations, and share professional content. You do not need a paid plan to create a profile or use the basic network. For job seekers, employees, freelancers, and business owners, it can make professional information easier to find and provide a place to build work-related relationships—but you can control what parts of your profile are visible publicly.
What LinkedIn is—and what it is not
LinkedIn combines a professional profile directory, a social network, messaging, search, organizational Pages, and job tools. Its Help Center describes a member profile as a “professional landing page” for managing a personal brand. Search can cover people, jobs, organizations, posts, and more. LinkedIn’s overview of its features shows why it is more than a job board: members can also use it to share updates, follow people and organizations, and discover professional content.
LinkedIn has free accounts and optional paid products, including Premium Career, Premium Business, and LinkedIn Learning Premium. Basic access and paid features are not the same thing: you can build a profile and use the network without buying Premium. Messaging is available to your 1st-degree connections; messaging other members depends on your connection status and their settings. LinkedIn’s invitation and connection guidance explains some of the limits on contacting people.
Why being on LinkedIn can be useful
Give recruiters and professional contacts a fuller picture
A profile can include your work experience, education, skills, recommendations, and media samples. These details give recruiters and other members more context about your qualifications than a job title alone. LinkedIn’s profile guidance covers the information that can help make a profile useful.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →#1 Best Overall
Find and pursue work opportunities
LinkedIn supports job applications, résumé uploads, job alerts, and the Open to Work feature. It can also help you find recruiters, colleagues, and people in a field or organization you are exploring. These tools can put opportunities and professional contacts in one place, but having a profile does not guarantee a job or replace evaluating an employer and its offer.
Maintain work-related connections
You can connect with colleagues and other people in your professional network, message connections, follow organizations, and keep up with posts and articles. For freelancers and business owners, an individual profile can help explain who you are and what you do; an organization can also create a LinkedIn Page to represent its brand, products, services, job opportunities, and community presence.
Make selected professional information discoverable
Your profile may appear in LinkedIn search and, depending on your settings, in public search tools such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo. A public profile can act as a professional identity page outside LinkedIn, but only the sections enabled in your public-profile settings are intended to appear there, and some search previews may show less. See LinkedIn’s visibility settings guidance and its public-profile controls.
Connections and followers are different
| Relationship | What it means | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Connection | A two-way relationship; both members become 1st-degree connections. | You can message each other directly and see each other’s posts and updates in your feeds. |
| Follow | A one-way relationship that does not make you connected. | You can see the other member’s public posts and articles in your feed; they do not automatically see your posts. |
Those distinctions are set out in LinkedIn’s explanation of connections and followers. If a member’s profile shows Follow rather than Connect, LinkedIn says you can generally open More on the profile and choose Connect. A pending invitation to someone whose primary action is Follow makes you follow that person automatically; if the invitation is declined, you continue following until you unfollow manually.
The Tool Desk
Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →How to get started and connect with people
- Build a profile. Add relevant experience, education, skills, and professional examples so visitors can understand your background. Review LinkedIn’s profile recommendations as you decide what to include.
- Find people or organizations. Use LinkedIn search to look for people, jobs, organizations, posts, and other professional material. You can follow an organization or creator to see their public updates without sending a connection invitation.
- Send a connection invitation when there is a reason to connect. On a member’s profile, choose Connect. If it is not shown, choose More → Connect. You can also use Connect under a name in People you may know; if absent, use More → Connect. LinkedIn manages pending invitations through My Network. See the current connection instructions.
- Use job features that match your needs. Search listings, set job alerts, upload a résumé, or enable Open to Work if you want to signal that you are looking. Review what you are sharing before making job-search information visible to others.
LinkedIn allows up to 30,000 1st-degree connections and requires a primary email address to send invitations, according to its connection guidance. Sending invitations that recipients report as unwanted or spam can lead to a temporary restriction. In some cases LinkedIn asks, “How do you know [member name]?” Choosing “We don’t know each other” may prompt you to establish a relationship first, potentially through InMail depending on the recipient’s settings.
What to know about profile visibility and privacy
“Private” is not a single switch that makes a profile invisible. LinkedIn separates public-profile visibility, discovery using your email address or phone number, and profile discovery and visibility off LinkedIn. Your profile may still be searchable within LinkedIn, and permitted services may expose selected information according to their settings. The controls below address different kinds of discovery.
Rank #3
- Used Book in Good Condition
Control what appears on your public profile
- On desktop: Select Me → View Profile, then select the Edit icon beside Public profile & URL in the right pane.
- On mobile: Select your profile photo → Settings → Visibility → Edit your public profile under Visibility of your profile & network.
- Turn Your profile’s public visibility off to hide the profile from public view, or switch off individual public sections. Changes save automatically.
These settings govern public-profile display; they are separate from LinkedIn’s off-LinkedIn discovery control. Search engines can take several weeks or months to refresh results after a profile change because LinkedIn does not control their update schedules. If an outdated result remains, LinkedIn advises contacting the search engine. Details are in LinkedIn’s public-profile visibility instructions.
Limit discovery using your email address or phone number
On desktop, go to Me → Settings & Privacy → Visibility. Under Visibility of your profile & network, choose Change next to Profile discovery using email address or Profile discovery using phone number. Depending on the control, choices may include Anyone, 1st-degree connections, 2nd-degree connections, 1st and 2nd-degree connections, or Nobody; changes save automatically.
This setting does not let people search directly for a member by email address in LinkedIn search—LinkedIn says that direct search is not allowed. Nor does disabling email- or phone-based lookup prevent permitted off-LinkedIn services from finding a profile using a person’s name and organization. LinkedIn explains these limits and settings.
Review discovery off LinkedIn separately
On desktop, go to Me → Settings & Privacy, then under Visibility select Profile discovery and visibility off LinkedIn. Turn the setting on to show profile information to permitted services, or off to opt out. LinkedIn says this setting, formerly called “sharing data with third parties,” does not hide your public profile from search engines; use the public-profile visibility controls for that. It also does not prevent Page owners from exporting profile data and individual interactions with their Page when you allow access through Page owners exporting your data. See LinkedIn’s guidance on profile discovery and visibility off LinkedIn.
Choose who can follow you
On desktop, go to Me → Settings & Privacy → Visibility and choose Followers under Visibility of your LinkedIn activity. Who can follow you offers Everyone on LinkedIn or Your connections. The Make follow primary toggle controls whether Follow or Connect is the main action on your profile. Choosing Everyone on LinkedIn also enables your posts to be shared off LinkedIn. Choosing Your connections removes followers outside your network, makes your follower count equal your connection count, and removes the Follow button beside your posts or articles; changes can take up to 24 hours. See LinkedIn’s follower settings instructions.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Organizations can create a LinkedIn Page
A LinkedIn Page represents an organization rather than an individual member. Creating one is free, but requires a LinkedIn account. LinkedIn’s current documentation supports Page creation on desktop and in the iOS app, not on Android mobile devices.
Best Value
- Desktop: Select For Business in the upper-right corner, scroll down, and choose Create a Company Page. Available types are Company, Showcase page, and Educational institution.
- iOS: Go to any LinkedIn Page, select More, then Create a LinkedIn Page. The available types are Company and Educational institution.
After entering the Page information and selecting the verification box, choose Create page, then Start building your page! The person who creates the Page becomes its super admin and can assign other admins. See LinkedIn’s Page creation instructions.
Is LinkedIn worth using?
LinkedIn is most useful if you want a professional profile that is easy to share, a way to maintain work connections, access to job-search tools, or a channel for following organizations and professional topics. It is not necessary for every person or every career, and creating an account does not ensure that recruiters will contact you or that a job search will succeed. If you join, keep your profile accurate, connect selectively, and use the visibility controls to choose what information you want available publicly.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
