Why I Love Purging LinkedIn Connections

This week I went through my LinkedIn profile and figured I'd cull the list of connections I maintain. It turns out, even with a few deletions here-and-there every year, I was still over 800 connections. That's stupid to me.

I know people use LinkedIn differently, but I'd like to think I use LinkedIn "the right way." That is, I try and use LinkedIn as a tool for my own job prospects, to help find roles for friends, or to help fill roles for companies needing great employees. The workflow I go about with regard to LinkedIn usage follows the basic process…

Meet Someone

Sure, I know, this is pretty obvious. However, I know plenty of LinkedIn users that get a random request from someone they don't know and there's no message to explain why they contacted them — but still accept.

For me, I'll play the idiot card and just message them and say, Hey, sorry I don't remember meeting you, could you explain how we know each other? Almost always, I get no reply back even. If I can't get someone's attention asking how I know them, how likely is it that they are going to be a good connection to have at all?

If I do connect with someone, either by someone reaching out that perhaps I had just met at an event or a new co-worker, I'll gladly accept unless they really creep me out. And there it is, +1 connection.

Observe, Interact, and Infer

LinkedIn is a spectator sport unless you're recruiting. You see some people get new jobs, maybe they post content occasionally — hell, maybe you even post content occasionally. But this isn't Facebook or Twitter, the traffic volume is usually low from folks except for auto-posting apps that make me hate people. Having ran social media for a few months, I began to hate myself, too.

It's important for me to see people at least maintain their profile because it's an indicator they are attentive to their career and focus on presenting themselves well. When I have a job to fill with a friend's company, I don't want to send a "hello" message and get no reply for six months. Further, it really helps to be able to copy-and-paste some job history of a person when they are looking for a new gig and I have a hot lead for them.

Based on what is happening on their profile, I can infer what's happening with their career — are they attending conferences? do they travel a lot? how often are they switching jobs? who are they working with now? etc. This insight gives me more to work with to figure out that a company is growing/shrinking and happy/sad.

Keep or Delete

If I meet someone at a conference — which happens a lot — I will probably forget about them 9 out of 10 times because we never end up talking again. That's OK, though, that's how networking goes sometimes. If every conversation I had with someone who wanted to "follow-up" happened, there'd be no time to do actual work. Because of this, connection cruft builds up and all of the sudden your "connections" look like a pile of strangers.

The entire "LinkedIn LION" thing is insane to me. Connecting with everyone just to connect is basically as useless as connecting with nobody. You can't figure out who you actually know, why you know them, if you should talk to them, or if they are even real people and not just spam accounts.

So, every few months I will try and go through as many contacts as I can and if I haven't ever spoken to them for a professional reason, they aren't a personal friend of mine, or most importantly, I can't remember why we connected in the first place — into the connection shredder they go. Thus far, I've never had anyone message me about that because I doubt those people would ever realize I had unconnected with them.

Have Some Standards

Real networking is about making actual connections. People you can keep track of as they go through their career, acquaintances that share similar interest, professional colleagues who may provide insight, and former co-workers you'd love to work with again one day.

We're all better off when we don't pretend like our networks are bigger than they are — you're only fooling yourself at the detriment of making useful, long-lasting connections with people who matter.

So, go delete some folks, it will feel great.