LinkedIn training tip – How to remove a LinkedIn connection, or how women dump me

by patrick_omalley

Summary:

This blog entry will give you the steps necessary to remove a LinkedIn connection, which is not as easy as you might think.  It could have been titled “How to dump Patrick O’Malley”.

Details:

I get this all the time.  Patrick, I don’t want to date you anymore, I don’t want to be your LinkedIn connection, and I want to defriend you on Facebook.  Oh, and stop following me on Twitter.  Can you please tell me how to do that?

Therefore, I figured I’d write it down to make the break-ups less painful.  If you want to “disconnect” from a current connection on LinkedIn, here’s what you do:

• Go to your LinkedIn home page
• On the left hand side, expand the + button to the right of the word Contacts if it is not already expanded
• Click Connections
• In the upper right hand corner (in a place you’re unlikely to look), click Remove Connections
• Click the box next to the user’s names
• On the right, click “Remove Connections”

Oddly enough, there’s no way to do it while you are looking at the person’s profile, which is one of the places you’d expect it to be.

Note that LinkedIn does not tell the other person that you have disconnected from them, so they may never know you’ve dumped them unless they specifically look.  That’s pretty cool.

However, most women go out of their way to tell me they’re doing it.  That’s pretty cold.

Another note – thanks to the folks from http://www.executivesnetwork.com in today’s “LinkedIn webinar for executives” for asking the question, and for helping to figure it out on the fly.

Good luck!

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15 comments

1 LinkedIn training tip – Hiding your connections | Missing LinkedIn Tips for Sales, Jobs, Recruiting, HR, etc { 05.29.09 at 2:02 pm }

[...] Some LinkedIn users will get mad at you. In the LinkedIn Q&A forums, people get very angry about people that prevent others from looking through their connections, because they think this somehow limits free networking.  I’ve never really believed in this argument, so I fully understand anyone who wants to protect their online rolodex.  Those people may threaten to remove you as a connection.  You can point them to a blog entry that I wrote about How to remove a LinkedIn connection, or how women dump me. [...]

2 Gijs { 03.29.10 at 7:37 am }

Thank for pointing out how to remove a LinkedIn connection. Would you also know how to change the degree of a LinkedIn connection. Let’s say that you met your new girlfrind (3rd degree connection) on LinkedIn and after your second date you decide that she really needs to be a 1st degree connection in your network. How do you do that?

3 Patrick OMalley { 03.29.10 at 8:06 am }

Gijs,

Your 1st degree connections are your LinkedIn “friends”, so you’d have to invite someone and have them accept your request in order to become a 1st level connection.

4 Gijs { 03.29.10 at 9:31 am }

Thanks Patrick. So you are saying that all the people in my contacts list are 1st degree connections … right? Sorry I am a LinkedIn newbie.

5 Patrick OMalley { 03.29.10 at 12:34 pm }

Gijs,

Actually, all the people in your “connections” list are 1st degree connections.

“Contacts” are anyone whose email addresses you’ve loaded into LinkedIn. You can then decide whether or not to invite them. If you do invite them, and they don’t accept, they are still “contacts” but not “connections”. If they accept, they become “connections”.

6 Victoria Thomas { 03.31.10 at 8:49 am }

great answer just what I was looking for, now I feel more confident in using Linkedin. also wanted to say thanks for being at the EMC Venues event great topic.

7 Patrick OMalley { 03.31.10 at 9:15 am }

thanks, Victoria

8 sam black { 06.14.10 at 5:19 am }

yes but how do you go about removing the CONTACT not just the CONNECTION?
thanks!

9 Patrick OMalley { 06.14.10 at 8:59 am }

Sam,

Go to Contact, Imported Contacts, select the appropriate Contact, and in the upper left, Delete it.

LinkedIn’s code is really buggy, and is giving “address book is unavailable” errors at this second, but tends to work at night or at off hours.

10 E123 { 11.29.10 at 6:27 am }

If you remove someone from your contact list will they be able to add you again?

11 Patrick O’Malley { 11.29.10 at 12:20 pm }

e123,

I doubt it, although I haven’t tested it. It won’t let you invite a person more than once, so it remembers the email addresses of the people you invited, so I would assume it would also remember the people who removed others.

12 E123 { 11.29.10 at 1:17 pm }

I know its so cheeky but if you can somehow test it for me then i would be eternally grateful?

13 Patrick O’Malley { 11.29.10 at 1:27 pm }

Send me a LinkedIn connection, and we can try it.

14 E123 { 11.30.10 at 4:30 am }

OK, another question, can the person you have removed send you an email once they are removed?

15 Patrick O’Malley { 12.01.10 at 4:29 pm }

E123,

No. However, while they were connected, they could have copied your email address from your profile page, and in that case they could send you emails forever.

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