LinkedIn has become the go-to platform for professional networking and building a digital presence. With over 277 million users worldwide, LinkedIn offers the ability to connect with colleagues, employers, potential hires, and industry experts. One useful feature is the ability to see mutual connections with other LinkedIn members, which can help with relationship building. However, some individuals choose to hide their connections from their LinkedIn profile for various reasons.
Privacy Concerns
One of the main reasons people may hide their LinkedIn connections is due to privacy concerns. Displaying all of one’s connections publicly allows anyone to see their professional network. This may make some people uncomfortable, especially those who use LinkedIn for job searching and don’t necessarily want their current employer seeing all of their connections. By hiding connections, it gives a sense of greater control over who can view your contacts.
Additionally, keeping connections private prevents others from identifying all the companies and people someone is connected to. If you work in a competitive field, keeping your connections hidden may help limit others from mapping your professional network. Privacy settings allow you to reveal connections only to your direct connections or keep them entirely private. Rather than completely exposing your contacts, hiding them enables you to reveal connections strategically.
Avoid Signaling Connections
Choosing not to showcase connections publicly can also help individuals avoid signaling relationships, positive or negative, with others. For example, displaying a connection with a previous boss or co-worker may give unintentional signals about past roles, experiences, and relationships. Keeping connections private allows you to make purposeful choices about when to reveal certain connections, rather than passive signals coming from public visibility.
Similarly, hiding contacts prevents openly displaying connections that may reflect poorly. Public connections to co-workers during a period of layoffs or unwanted publicity, for example, may imply guilt by association. Hidden contacts allow for more control over public perception and prevent unintentional signaling.
Maintain Separation Between Personal and Professional
Many people use LinkedIn specifically for business networking purposes and prefer to keep their professional connections separate from their personal life. Displaying all connections publicly may reveal contacts from outside professional spheres, such as family friends, neighbors, or acquaintances met through hobbies and outside interests.
For those who want to maintain clear separation between their professional persona on LinkedIn and their personal life, hiding connections is a way to achieve that division. It also prevents existing professional connections, like co-workers, managers and direct reports, from gaining additional visibility into personal relationships and activities outside of work.
Avoid Unwanted Outreach
Hidden connections protect against third-degree connections leveraging visible shared contacts to make unwanted outreach. With open connections, anyone can see shared contacts and use that as an opportunity to try to connect directly, even without a prior relationship. This leaves the door open for unsolicited outreach, especially by sales professionals.
By hiding connections, you reduce the visibility for others to identify potential bridges to connect through. Rather than getting random requests based on visible shared connections, hiding contacts provides more control over with whom you choose to connect directly.
Manage Public Perception
The number of connections displayed publicly on a LinkedIn profile contributes to overall perceptions and credibility. Those with fewer visible contacts may appear less connected or influential professionally. On the other hand, extremely large numbers of connections can also raise questions and affect perceptions.
Obscuring the actual number of connections enables managing outward perception by avoiding displaying connection counts that are unusually small or large. Hiding the real number removes the visibility into totals that could positively or negatively skew judgments by others.
Focus on Quality Over Quantity
With open connection lists, viewers may make assumptions and judgments based on the number of contacts. Those with long lists of connections may be perceived as unfocused collectors of contacts, while those with fewer connections may seem less influential.
Hiding connections focuses impressions on personal brand, expertise and content rather than quantity of connections. This supports a priority on quality over quantity of contacts by removing arbitrary counts as a factor influencing reputation.
Avoid Unwanted Advances
Unfortunately, visible connections on some social networks occasionally attract unwanted advances or harassment. When all connections are viewable by everyone, it opens the door for some to leverage contacts to try connecting with people directly in unwelcome ways. Obscuring contacts limits the ability for those intent on unwarranted messaging to identify potential targets.
Protect Contacts’ Privacy
Displaying connections publicly also exposes those contacts and their names to everyone openly. Even if you are comfortable showcasing your connections, individuals in your network may prefer their name and participation to remain more private. Hiding contacts protects their preferences and anonymity.
Shift Focus to Content
With connections visible, viewers of a profile may place undue focus on judging contacts rather than assessing quality of content and capabilities. Hiding connections minimizes attention given to contact lists and encourages focusing impressions on your own profile content like skills, recommendations, and published articles.
Avoid Misinterpretations
The implications of connections and relationship can sometimes be misconstrued when visibility is limited to a name with no context. Simply displaying a name may lead some to draw inaccurate conclusions about the nature of a connection without understanding nuances of the relationship. Concealing connections prevents false assumptions.
Reduce Unwanted Contact
For some, open connections lead to distracting notifications and contact from people they barely know. When all connections are visible, it prompts messages from old co-workers, distant acquaintances, and friends of friends seeking to connect directly. Hiding contacts reduces the likelihood of unnecessary communication from those loose ties leveraging visible contacts.
Table of Reasons to Hide LinkedIn Connections
Reason | Description |
---|---|
Privacy Concerns | Prevent exposing full professional network publicly |
Avoid Signaling | Prevent passive signals from visible connections |
Separate Professional and Personal | Maintain division between work and personal life |
Avoid Unwanted Outreach | Reduce unsolicited contact leveraging connections |
Manage Public Perception | Obscure actual number of connections |
Focus on Quality Over Quantity | Emphasize expertise over number of connections |
Avoid Unwanted Advances | Protect against inappropriate contact |
Protect Contacts’ Privacy | Respect connections’ preferences for anonymity |
Shift Focus to Content | Spotlight profile expertise over contacts |
Avoid Misinterpretations | Prevent false assumptions from visible contacts |
Reduce Unwanted Contact | Limit distracting messages from loose ties |
Conclusion
There are many potential reasons someone may want to keep their LinkedIn contacts private. It gives greater control over privacy settings and public perceptions. Hiding connections enables focusing outward impressions on expertise and content rather than quantity of contacts. And it prevents unwanted exposure, messaging, and assumptions based on visible relationships. Ultimately, keeping connections obscured aligns with LinkedIn’s purpose as a professional networking tool and enables users to maximize value on their own terms.