Did you know that you can withdraw pending LinkedIn connection requests? The person won’t be notified about it.

You can cancel any LinkedIn invitation you’ve sent accidentally, or that you regret sending, as long as the LinkedIn member hasn’t accepted your invitation.

If you’ve sent a LinkedIn invite you are now second-guessing, you should by all means cancel it.

An interesting fact to note is that if you withdraw your LinkedIn invitation before the recipients check their invites, they won’t know that you’ve cancelled the invite, unless they have notifications set up.

(After you withdraw an invitation, you won’t be able to resend an invite to that recipient for up to 3 weeks).

Here are some reasons why your connection requests may not be accepted:

  • The recipient doesn’t want to connect with you (sorry!) There is a high chance the recipient has clicked the IGNORE button.
  • The recipient has a number of connection requests and hasn’t gotten to yours.
  • The recipient doesn’t regularly use the network.
  • The recipient has reached their connection limit (30,000). At that point you can only follow their profile.

Note:

  • Withdrawing an invitation will stop the recipient from receiving any further reminder emails to accept the invitation.
  • If you withdraw an invitation, the recipient won’t be notified.
  • If the recipient has already accepted your invitation to connect, you still have the option to remove them as a connection.
  • You cannot unblock or view your blocked invitations. Learn more about adjusting your settings for who can send you invitations.

My recommendations:

  • Delete any pending requests that have not been accepted from more than two weeks.
  • Only send connection requests to people you know (LinkedIn can flag your account for sending requests to people you don’t know).
  • Don’t be discouraged if some of your requests are ignored or not accepted – it happens to ALL of us!

While the number of your LinkedIn connections is important, more important is the composition of your network. Think quality over quantity.

Here’s how to do it:

To view and withdraw your sent invitations:

  1. Click the  My Network icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
    • You can accept or ignore any pending invitations displayed at the top of the page.
  2. Click See all [number] next to Invitations at the top of the My Network page.
  3. Click the Sent tab under Manage invitationsNote: You’ll see a list of invitations you’ve sent to People, Pages and Events that are still waiting for a response.
  4. Click Withdraw next to a recipient’s name.
  5. In the pop-up that appears, confirm your decision.

I hope this clears up how to withdraw LinkedIn invites that haven’t been accepted. Also, please don’t feel badly that some of your LinkedIn invitations aren’t accepted – it’s par for the course when it comes to online networking, and it happens to everyone, including me.