LinkedIn training tip – Who said “I don’t know this user” to your LinkedIn invitation
Summary:
LinkedIn tells you not to invite people you don’t know, but they don’t make the punishment clear, and it’s harsh. If 5 people say they don’t know you, you get blacklisted, and you can no longer invite people by name.
Others have written about that part, and I will write about it in the future, but in this post, I’m going to address something no one has written about – how do you find out WHO said “I don’t know this user” to your invitation.
Details:
If you send an invitation to someone on LinkedIn, they have the option to Accept, Archive, or say “I don’t know this user”. If just 5 people say “I don’t know this user”, you are put on the LinkedIn blacklist, and LinkedIn won’t make that clear to you. Instead, you would be asked for an email address every time you want to invite someone in the future, which is particularly annoying when you’re trying to get in touch with
- college friends
- high school friends
- childhood friends
- sales contacts
or anyone else you haven’t seen in a few years.
Here’s how you find out who IDKed you, i.e., who said “I don’t know this user”. This just changed in mid-March 2009, and became more difficult, but I have a clever, cutting edge solution. How’s that for a lead in?
- Go to your LinkedIn home page
- Expand the Inbox on the left (if it isn’t expanded) by clicking on the plus sign box
- Click Sent
- On the Inbox Sent page, click Status in the upper right to see the Invitations that you’ve sent
- Now you want to look for the status “Doesn’t Know”, but it will be in alphabetical order in the middle of the following:
- Accepted
- Bounced
- Doesn’t Know
- Expired
- In Progress
- Pending
- Replaced
- Sent
- At the bottom of that page, it will say
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 …60
but it no longer lets you click directly on page 27, and the “Doesn’t Know” section is usually about 40-50% of the way in
- Here’s the clever trick
- Click on the number 2 to get to page 2
- Then instead of clicking numbers constantly until you get to 27
- Go to the URL in your address box (i.e. where it says http://www.linkedin.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
- At the end it will say split_page=2
- Change the 2 to a 27, or whatever page you want to guess
- Go higher or lower if you have to find the “Doesn’t know” invitations
- Now go find the people and beat them with a stick
- Then I’ll give you the names of the people that IDKed me, and you can beat them with the same stick
- Supposedly, if you get them to invite you, it eliminates the IDK, but I’ve seen at least one case where this didn’t happen.
In fairness, it’s not entirely the other person’s fault. LinkedIn doesn’t tell anyone the severity of an IDK, or the effect that it can have on others.
I will do more on this later, but this answers a question I hear regularly in my LinkedIn seminars. Now you can at least if somebody IDKs you, you can find the culprit.
Notes:
- If you have been put on the IDK list multiple times, and LinkedIn won’t let you out of it, email me at the contact email address at the bottom of the page and I’ll tell you how to get around the problem. Make sure you put “IDK solution” in the subject line
In a future post
- What to do if you want to invite people you don’t know
- My rant on the whole IDK issue
25 comments
Someone recently pressed “IDK” on my invitation. I sent them a message and explained that I was sorry to contact them and if this happens 5 times then it would cause problems on my account. And asked them to invite me and I would archive their invitation. I first tried to Archive the message but it did not seem to change the status. I then connected with them but still does not seem to have changed the previous message so not sure if it worked. I finally disconnected with them and sent them a message to thank them anyway.
If anyone else has experience with this I would be interested to know.
Michael,
I observed the exact same thing on a client account. There had been rumblings in LinkedIn’s Q&A forum that if the person that IDKed you turned around and invited you, that would cancel the IDK, but it doesn’t appear to do that. If you send an email to cs@linkedin.com, they may be able to do something, but they certainly have some bad policies about this, and they make it much too difficult. Sorry.
I think it is also important to prevent IDKs. I have found that too many people do not properly introduce themselves in their invitations. Instead they just send it with the default invite text. I find that if you include the reason for your invitation and a little bit about how a connection can be beneficial, they are more likely to connect.
Thank you for this post. I was unaware that IDKs could cause these problems.
Jeff
[...] LinkedIn training tip – Who said “I don’t know this user” to your LinkedIn invitation [...]
In response to Jeff Goldman’s point about people just sending invites with “the default invite text”. Well Jeff, if LinkedIn in their ridiculous attempt to show us what is and is not kosher as an invitation imbeds text in the invitation layout,,,,than by all means let :
a) people who invite use it, and b) people who are being invited just accept it. I have heard rumors that MANY innocent business people have been black-listed for 5 “I dont know” invites and they are ready for another social networking platform. Let’s face it – LinkedIn is __________.
Do you know if there is any way to reduce the number of IDKs – for example, I invited someone who was a former colleague (she certainly knows me, we trained together and worked together for over a year), and she selected IDK twice – for both her work and personal e-mail. I got another IDK from a former best friend in college who I was trying to reconnect with… I guess she doesn’t think we’re friends anymore, eh? Anyway, I now have 3, and 2 of these are from the same pesron!!
You can’t reduce your IDKs. I’ve read that if someone IDKs you, then reconsiders and invites you, that the IDK is removed, but I tested it and the IDK remained.
After 5 IDKs, you can apologize to LinkedIn and they will give you another 5. After that, I have another solution, but LinkedIn wouldn’t like it, so email me using the “Contact Us’ info on the left, and I’ll send it to you.
IDK solution
[...] http://www.the-linkedin-speaker.com/blog/2009/03/31/linkedin-tip-find-out-who-%E2%80%9Ci-don%E2%80%9... [...]
Hi!
It seems we got the same problem. I am IDKed 5 times. Is there any solution? Hope to hear from you!
Thanks in advance,
Lucas
http://www.wolferts.nl
IDK Solution
# Now go find the people and beat them with a stick
# Then I’ll give you the names of the people that IDKed me, and you can beat them with the same stick
Why? I mean linkedin tells you specifically to not add people you don’t know. If I add someone I don’t know, I should expect that they _might_ just click on that IDK button.
You shouldn’t be angry at someone else.
Dustin, I only invite people I know.
One guy who IDKed me twice, and I know him well, but he has this belief that he will only be LinkedIn with people he has actually worked with before.
Mostly, though, I just thought it was a funny line.
I got several IDK (I dont Know) from several people working at one company, who was apparently unaware that I was no longer working for a competitor.
They decided to IDK me. There are legitimate reasons not to accept a competitor a competitor as they can see your network etc.
Jacob,
I agree, and wrote a blog entry about it at http://www.the-linkedin-speaker.com/blog/2009/05/29/linkedin-training-tip-hiding-your-connections/
“IDK solution”
Need ” IDK Solution” , As I am doing market research i need to always need to talk with new people, and have to communicate with them on linkedin, I have got don’t know from several users and now I cannot connect with people due to this problem. Is there any solution to get out of this.
Rushikesh,
I just emailed it.
LinkedIn is a great tool and I have made many meaningful connections, even connections that have helped in International business development, but like any tool , there can be drawbacks.
I think LinkedIn should have a more explicit explanation as people “click” the IDK category and before they hit submit, something like- “By choosing to identify this person as “I don’t know” you may contribute to the revocation of this users privileges.” I looked up my IDK’s and have more than 5 but over a 2 year period. Several were from people that do know me, why they clicked IDK? is beyond me. A few were people that I knew of through other mutual connections. Perhaps I may have been lucky thus far!
Dear Patrick Omalley,
My LinkedIn account is Blacklisted. I have 428 contacts and 5 IDK’s.
I send five weeks ago Customer Service an apology mail, no response!
Please, can you tell me how to get off that IDK list?
Friendly Regards,
Ad van Beek
“IDK solution”
Would be great if you could help me to get off the IDK list.
Thanks!
Camillo
subject : “IDK solution”
Would be great if you could help me to get off the IDK list of Linkedin.
Thanks!
Camillo
subject “IDK solution”
I think I have been IDK-ed as I can not see last names of people in a search who I do not have a direct link with (3rd connections). I am not sure if IDK is the problem because I can only tell who has accepted my invitation (not who hasn’t and the reason being IDK). I would really appreciate learning how to deal with this!
Thanks!
IDK solution
I’m not able to see who IDKed me using the tip/trick above. Have LinkedIn changed their UI to prevent this?
Thanks,
/M
/M,
They changed this completely in the last month or so, and there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to do it. The upside is that in the new layout, people can’t IDK you anymore.
I wrote this up for the people who are subscribed to my newsletter, so you may want to subscribe.
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