Are you getting so many LinkedIn invites that you already unsubscribe from all LinkedIn notifications? And is the number of LinkedIn invites that you are getting from strangers getting bigger every day?
Then I will show you five easy tricks to limit the number of invitations you receive and hide your LinkedIn profile from recruiters.
Disclaimer: If you follow any of this advice, you could miss a great job opportunity (especially from me 🙂 ), and your profile is still not going to be 100% invisible. Even if you delete your LinkedIn profile, your data is already on the internet, and there is always a possibility that recruiters will find you.
Five Ways to Limit the Number of LinkedIn Invitations You Receive
Delete your LinkedIn profile
This is the easiest option to become invisible on the LinkedIn. But I am not recommending that option, especially if you don’t want to miss a great job offer from people like me :), an offer that could change your life. You probably already spent some time building your profile and you don’t want to lose all your contacts from your network. Also, even if you delete your LinkedIn profile, it will take some time before it’s going to vanish from all the apps that recruiters are using.
Update a summary
You can add a simple sentence like, “Dear recruiters, I’m happy where I am, and I don’t care what you’re offering. I am not planning to leave,” to your summary. This will limit the number of recruiters that will try to contact you. However, it is still not going to prevent recruiters that don’t read your profile or think they have the best offer you can get and you will say yes.
One of my friends was contacted by one recruiter so often that he added, “Recruiters, if you have a job offer for me, please contact this recruiter,” and added his email address. But I am not recommending that.
Limit the number of keywords
We recruiters (and also A.I. tools) are searching for particular keywords, and if your profile has a bunch of them, you will appear in our search. If you want to become invisible to recruiters, you need to eliminate these keywords that recruiters might use to find you.
If you are, for example, an accountant and you are getting job offers where there is a one requirement certification “Certified Public Accountant (CPA),” the CPA is the keyword that is used for a search. If you remove it and a recruiter is be looking for CPA, your profile is not going to appear in the search. However, you need to also remove “Certified Public Accountant” from your profile and not only CPA.
Removing keywords and keeping only basic information on your profile is the best way to appear on the last page of the search.
Block Recruiters
Before you start blocking recruiters check if you selected NO for the “Let recruiters know you’re open to opportunities” option in your LinkedIn settings.
You will find this option Under LinkedIn’s privacy settings; there is a Job Seeking option. You can use this to change the option to let recruiters see your profile or not. Do you have that setting set to NO?
LinkedIn gives you the ability to block any person who is spamming you or you just don’t like that person for some reason. You can remove that person from connection or block it. When you block a LinkedIn user, you become invisible to this person, and he/she is invisible to you. However, you will disappear only for that specific person; if you block one recruiter, his/her colleagues will still be able to find you on LinkedIn.
Block Strangers
I found a way to radically limit the number of LinkedIn invites during a Hired!Bcn conference. I met Nacho Cofré and because I am a recruiter I was trying to add him into my network on LinkedIn. I was quite surprised that, after I hit the LinkedIn invite, I was asked to enter his email address instead of receiving the typical message telling me that my invite was sent. I asked Nacho how it was possible that I couldn’t add him, and he showed me how this trick that helped him limit the number of LinkedIn invites works.
If you turn this option on it will limit the number of people who will try to add you into their network. And it will also remove some recruiters and other people who are just hitting on the “Connect” button to add everybody.
Go to your Settings https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/ select the “Communications” tab and then select “Who can send you invitations” and the option “Only people who know your email address or appear in your ‘Imported Contacts’ list.”
And this will limit the number of LinkedIn invitations you will get. However, as I said before, this will not only limit the number of invites but could also cost you some exceptional job offers.
Conclusion
If you have skills or have the “right” job title that every recruiter is trying to find, I assume that you are tired of getting tons of LinkedIn invites and InMails with job offers. As you can see, there are a few ways to limit the number of requests.
Keep in mind that even if you are going to choose methods two through five from this article, you will still be able to get InMails from recruiters and people who have a premium account. They are paying for LinkedIn InMails, so they will still be able to contact you.
Being completely invisible could cost you an attractive job offer. But the choice is yours if you would like to disappear completely, limit the number of invitations you receive or make it a little bit harder for recruiters to reach you.