Tips for Managing LinkedIn Connection Requests

As you spend time on LinkedIn, you’ll likely receive many connection requests, and you may end up wondering which you should accept and which you should decline. The tips in this article should help you think about your networking strategy, and develop simple, efficient processes for managing connecting requests.

What Are Your Networking Goals?

Making decisions about invitations is much easier when you are clear about what you are trying to accomplish:

• Some people want to maximize the size of their LinkedIn network as fast as possible. This may make sense for people who are trying to build an audience for content they publish, or who want make it as easy as possible for people to contact them, or who think that having more connections increases that chance that any one of them (regardless of how weak) may prove useful someday.
• Other people (including me), don’t find value in having strangers in their network, and prefer to connect only with people with whom they’re acquainted, even if that’s only through a brief conversation. (For more on this perspective, see Networking For Quality, Not Just Quantity.)
• Still others are very selective, and won’t connect with people they haven’t known for a long time. One I know only connects with people he has actually worked alongside. (Of course, such a policy will severely limit the size of one’s LinkedIn network, and will minimize the opportunities it could generate.)

Think about your own professional networking goals, and develop your own policy for deciding whether or not to accept a connection request. Keep in mind that some LinkedIn members will misuse the platform for unsolicited marketing, phishing, and other unethical activities; they may do so using legitimate profiles or create phony profiles. Even if your goal is to build a big network as fast as possible, you should be careful to avoid allowing abusers into it.

Define Some Screening Criteria

Managing connection requests becomes much easier if you establish some standard processes for evaluating them. When I receive an invitation to connect, I I ask myself a series of questions:

1.????Do I already know and trust this person?

If I can confidently say “Yes”, I may go ahead and accept the invitation, regardless of where I am in the LinkedIn app or web page, without bothering to look at the person’s profile. But checking out the requester’s profile is always a good idea – I may learn some things about them that will catalyze a conversation or an opportunity to help, which will reinforce my new connection. It’s also possible that an abuser could be impersonating someone I know, and a quick visit to the profile will likely expose that.

2.????Did the invitation come with a note?

A good networking practice is to include a note with every invitation you send, to provide context and help the recipient understand why you want to connect. Only a small fraction of the invitations I receive come with a note, but those that come with a personalized note clarifying how I met the requester and how I might benefit by connecting are far more likely to get me to accept the request than the generic “I’d like to connect”. I may do some additional vetting, but I’ll be more motivated to do it than I would be without the note.

If the note contains no information that’s specific to me (“I saw your profile, and you look like a leader in your field”), it’s clearly from somebody who’s not bothering to invest much effort into building a relationship with me — probably somebody who’s focused on what they can gain, and not considering my interests. I don’t want such people in my network; I want people who seek to develop mutually beneficial relationships.

3.????Do I recognize this person?

Often I’ll receive invitations from people I don’t yet know, but may have seen at a meetup (see Get Thee to a Meetup [https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/get-thee-meetup-jim-schibler] for some related networking tips), or at a presentation I gave, or at some other virtual or in-person gathering. Sometimes I’ll get an invitation from someone I’ve heard about, but never had the chance to actually meet. I’m generally willing to invest some time into getting to know these people, especially if they’ve included a personalized note (see #2 above).

4.????Does this person’s profile look legitimate?

A quick visit to the person’s LinkedIn profile can tell me a lot, including:

• what the person looks like
• where s(he) is located
• what s(he) does for a living
• whether s(he) has an concise, articulate summary
• how many connection s(he) has
• any connections we have in common
• any social proof (endorsements, recommendations)
• any content s(he) has posted
• educational history
• activity on LinkedIn

Fake profiles are often easy to identify; they’ll typically have few connections, little content, little social proof, peculiar education details, and little or no activity. To help keep fake profiles out of the LinkedIn ecosystem, I report any profiles that look suspicious.

5.????Does there seem to be a good reason to connect?

Sometimes, it’s obvious that the requester and I have common professional interests. Other times, I have no idea why someone whose interests appear to have virtually no overlap with mine is asking me to join their network. Again, a note explaining the outreach can prevent confusion and make me more willing to establish a new relationship.

I don’t want to limit my network to people who do the same kind of work I do; some of the greatest value of my network is being able to interact with people who have different expertise and talents than I do: engineers, graphic designers, attorneys, finance professionals, sales professionals, event planners, and so on. Connecting with customers and clients often leads to referrals for new business. In addition, having more diversity in my network increases the chances that someone within it will know someone who can help me find a resource I need.

Nevertheless, I’ve gotten generic and pseudo-personalized invitations from cosmeticians, realtors, mortgage brokers, and others who appear to be using LinkedIn to cold-call possible future clients, a practice I don’t condone. I definitely don’t want such people in my network, because they are thinking only about their needs, not mine.

Based on the answers to the above questions, I decide whether to invest time into converting an invitation into a high-quality connection.

You may want to use a similar screening framework to standardize and simplify your decision-making process.

Converting an Invitation Into a High-Quality Connection

If an invitation isn’t from someone I already know and trust, but seems to be legitimate and potentially relevant, I make an effort to get a conversation going. Without accepting the connection request, I use the Message function to send a brief note, copying from a file I keep of ‘boilerplate’ text snippets, such as these:

Thanks for your invitation. Have we met? Per LinkedIn guidelines, I usually connect only with people I know. Can you tell me how you found out about me, and why you'd like to connect?

Thanks for your invitation. It came without a note, so I'm lacking context.?Have we met??I prefer to get to know people before connecting on LinkedIn. Can you tell me how you found out about me, and why you'd like to connect?

Thanks for your invitation to connect.??You look somewhat familiar, but I'm not sure we've spoken.?Can you refresh my memory, and help me understand why you'd like to connect?

Thanks for your invitation. I'm happy to connect with other members of [organization], but I’d like to get acquainted first. Would you like to set up a time to chat?

About 65-75% of the time, I’ll get no response to my message, which tells me that most people aren’t really investing much effort into their networking. After a week or two, I’ll go back and click Ignore for the invitations from people who did not respond to me.

When people do reply, and provide the kind of details that would have preferably been included in a note with their invitation, I suggest they make an appointment for a brief conversation. In those conversations, I try to get a sense of the requester’s personality and situation, and ask questions that may reveal ways in which I can help the person (see Become a Superconnector! for more on that). Most often, I end up with a new connection of high quality, one in which each party remembers the other and will look for opportunities to help.

Should You Punish People Who Send Unwanted Invitations?

If you get an invitation from someone you don’t know, you can select Ignore, and the requester will not be notified that you did. After you decline the invitation, you can go a step further and select “I Don’t Know This Person”, which notifies LinkedIn that you received a (potentially inappropriate) cold-call invitation. If a LinkedIn member gets too many “I Don’t Know This Person” reactions, LinkedIn may stop allowing them to send out connection invitations. This mechanism may help reduce abuse by members who annoy other members by indiscriminately sending out large numbers of connection requests.

When I get an invitation that I feel was inappropriate (indiscriminately broadcast, irrelevant, from a fake account, etc.), I go ahead and select “I Don’t Know This Person”. However, if a cold-call invitation does not appear as if it was sent with self-serving intent, I’ll generally give the sender the benefit of the doubt and refrain from using “I Don’t Know” when I decline their invitation. There’s no need to be mean to people who probably have positive intent, and just need to improve their etiquette.

Choose Your Own Time for Managing Invitations

It’s appropriate to respond to LinkedIn invitations reasonably soon after receiving them, but you don’t need to feel obliged to drop everything else and react to each invitation as soon as it comes in. If a few weeks elapse, the sender may forget why they sent you the invitation, but if you respond within a few days, the memory should be fresh.

I review my invitations a few times a week, and work through them in batches. I find this to be more efficient than responding to requests individually, and it helps me stay better focused on other things that need my attention.

Do What’s Right for You

I hope that this article has helped you think strategically about how to manage the LinkedIn connection requests you receive. My practices have been working well for me, but they won’t be a fit for everyone. The important thing is to figure out what you want, and develop processes and habits that support your goals. Happy networking!

Jim Schibler leads product management teams that deliver software experiences customers love, and he coaches professionals on job search and career management. He writes on a broad range of topics; see more of his articles at his website.

Copyright ? 2022 Jim Schibler — All rights reserved

Image credits: Crowd courtesy James Cridland at flickr.com; Invitation courtesy Pixabay.com; Meetup courtesy Ted Eytan; People Connections illustration courtesy Max Pixel.