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Users confused about ‘free trial’ of LinkedIn Talent finder account

Recently, I received an e-mail with a very alluring subject line, which went something along the lines of this: “Try LinkedIn Talent Finder for free for 1 month.”  I immediately dropped what I was doing and clicked the link which would deliver my free month’s subscription.

When I opened the link, I was asked for my credit card details. I was very confused at this: “Didn’t it say that the trial was free?” I asked myself. I went back to the original e-mail and it definitely promised me that I could try the Talent Finder account free for a month.

And it seems that I am not the only one.

Many LinkedIn users, like myself, became very excited about the prospect of the free one-month trial. LinkedIn is a great resource for HR, and especially recruiters, to use in the talent acquisition process. And the prospect of trying out this highly-priced tool mahala for a month sparked their interest.

And some of them did punch in their credit card details, probably thinking that they would cancel just before the billing cycle for the second month started. By the looks of things, many people decided to do this but got caught out because they either sent in the cancellation too late or had their query lost in the LinkedIn customer call centre.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that you must all not get LinkedIn premium accounts: The fact that you can view everyone’s extended profiles, and not just those of first and second degree connections, is a big plus for the HR professionals. All I’m saying is that before you buy your premium account, make sure you know exactly what you’re going to get from the account, how much it will cost and how you can cancel it if you need to.

Lia Marus is the editor of HR Pulse. She has a BA in French, Italian and Linguistics from UCT, an MA in translation from Wits and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. She is currently studying towards her LLB through Unisa. Lia started her career off in corporate communications, where she worked as a sub-editor, researcher and marketing coordinator. She then heeded the call of the publishing world and went into the business-to-business publishing field. She worked as a sub-editor as well as a chief sub-editor. Before joining ITWeb, she managed an HR guidebook at a leading international publishing company.