While cleaning up my LinkedIn connections from ones I don’t interact with anymore, I noticed something that happened quite a few times more than I expected.
When you remove someone from your contacts, they get a notification that you saw their profile. This can be both a curse and a blessing.
When they check out your profile, they might remember you because they don’t go too much on LinkedIn and still remember you, and wonder why you removed them and be confused as to why you’d remove them. That’s the curse.
But what about…
When It’s A Blessing
A lot of the people who use LinkedIn do so in order to either get a new job or to recruit new employees to their job. The latter, you might already know, are called Head Hunters.
Contrairy to what’s divulged by their title coming straight from a post-apocalyptic novel, all they want is to find the best person to join their company. (and they hope it’ll be you !)
When you lack options because all the jobs you find are senior-level and you’ve freshly-graduated, a headhunter is your best pal on this battlefield that is the job market. They’re your friends. Ok, not that close, but you can often trust them to help you.
Years pass, and after connecting with so many of them, they often will forget about you. There really isn’t a nice, convenient way to say “Hey, look at me, I have lots of experience now, I’m qualified !” without sounding like an ass. Until…
A Second Chance
They look back at your profile. And to do that, you look at theirs. And if they’re interested by the skills you acquired since they last pinged you, they’ll want you to tell them you’re interested in an offer.
But sometimes, you need to validate that they want to see if you’d be a fit for their employer.
That’s why you have to remove them as connection on LinkedIn. If they add you back, you know it’s ok to message them. Conscent is given clearly that way. From that point on, it becomes easier to re-initiate a dialogue.
It might not work for everyone, but this became a revelation when it personally happened to me a couple times over the past week while cleaning up my connections. Some of them even replied back to me ! Hopefully, it helps you too.
Cheers !