Do you have a lot of unanswered LinkedIn invitations? I’m sure it’s not that they don’t think you’re great or that you aren’t fabulously skilled. It might be that some of your invitees have created themselves multiple accounts (quite common) or don’t check the email that your invites have been sent to. Some of them simply don’t use LinkedIn. A few have forgotten their passwords and haven’t checked it since they turned on their accounts.
You may not realize that each account gets only 5000 invitations on LinkedIn*and this means you don’t have any to waste. You can reclaim the ones you’ve sent that are languishing in limbo. Below are instructions on how to get back some of the outstanding invitations you’ve sent (as of April 2023). This feature only exists in the desktop version of LinkedIn, not mobile.
How to Get Back LinkedIn Invitations
- Choose My Network in the navigation bar
- If you have unanswered invitations for yourself, click on See All on the right
- If you have an empty invite queue for yourself, click on Manage
- Select Sent
- Choose Withdraw on each invitation that you’d like to remove
- I get a pop-up that says “If you withdraw now, you won’t be able to resend (to that same person) for up to 3 weeks
You can also use this “take back” if you’ve invited someone by mistake or have second thoughts about connecting. I was testing a Connect button during a LinkedIn lesson with a client and accidentally invited someone I totally did not know. I went and took back the invite the next day.
Reminder: simply connecting with others on LinkedIn doesn’t make magic happen. This is a digital representation of your physical network. When you need information, services, help, or work, your network is where you go. LinkedIn simply makes it easier to know the skills and abilities of your network. See this blog about why LinkedIn is the place professionals do business or read my LinkedIn blog category to get your fill on the subject.
*I have heard that you can request more from Customer Service, though I don’t know how effective that is but here are two emails I’ve found for this need: customer_service@LinkedIn.com or cs@linkedin.com
so…is there a reason younare deleting the accepted and pending invitations separately? any reason not to just delete all ?
I wanted to see the outstanding ones by themselves as a group to count how many I was “getting back”. Also, for screenshot purposes.
Got it. So, once you’ve deleted the invitations, does your “counter” go back to 3000??? (Not that I’m likely to ever reach that number…) And deleting the ones who’ve already accepted, I assume, doesn’t delete them from your contacts.
My understanding is that you get 3000 over the life of your account. So if you have 500 contacts, you only have 2500 invites left.
I like the valuable info you provide in your articles. I’ll bookmark your blog and check again here frequently. I am quite sure I’ll learn many new stuff right here! Good luck for the next!
I’m glad you find it valuable, Maurice! Is there anything specifically you are interested to know more about?
Hi Kerry – Thanks for your advice. Can you confirm: by deleting all these unintentionally sent invitations (as per your instructions), am I actually removing them from other people’s inboxes or just my own sent box?
Rebecca, I’m glad you asked because I researched to answer your question and think my original advice wasn’t totally accurate. After reading this link, the suggestion is to click on the subject line of your invitation and select Withdraw rather than my tip to delete from your Sent box (this makes much more sense). Click the link and read it directly on LinkedIn. I’m going to update my blog to reflect this information. Thanks for asking! – Kerry
http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/26/kw/deleting%20emails%20from%20sent
Nice discussion. Thanks Kerry Rego for the posting how to get back linkedin invitations.
You’re welcome!
Great information, thank you. There are so many hidden/secret facets of LinkedIn that it is good to have help like this. I do have another question. I realized that I had sent an invitation to a connection who is deceased. How does LinkedIn deal with this since that person is probably still getting requests since his family never realized he had an account?
Ron, that’s a great question. I found this link explaining how you can report to LinkedIn of a deceased person: http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2842/~/deceased-linkedin-member—removing-profile
Best, Kerry
what ir you delete by mistake an invitation someone sent you? Is there a trash bin or something one can use to dig it back?
Thanks
There isn’t a trash bin or any other device to retrieve a deleted message or invitation. I wish there was.