How to Manage Pending Connections on LinkedIn Efficiently

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A complete guide on how pending connection requests work and how to remove unanswered invites before they hurt your account

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How to Manage Pending Connections on LinkedIn Efficiently

Don’t waste LinkedIn connection requests.

You must send out those connection requests to expand your LinkedIn network. The more, the merrier, right?

But what happens when they go unanswered?

If you have many pending connection requests, LinkedIn may stop promoting your account, limiting your ability to connect with new, active professionals.

So here’s everything you need to know about pending invites and how you avoid that scenario!

What Happens When You Withdraw a LinkedIn Invitation

When you choose to revoke an invitation, LinkedIn will not notify the recipient and will stop sending further email reminders to accept the invitation.

Removing a connection request also blocks you from resending that invitation to the same recipient for up to three weeks.

If you send a request by mistake and they accept your invitation before you can cancel it, you can always delete the connection.

You can revoke your invitations from the browser or mobile app, or even automatically when using Linkedin outreach tools.

When You Should Cancel a LinkedIn Connection Request

You should cancel the invitation request if the recipient hasn’t accepted it after one or two weeks. This means they’re not interested in connecting with you or actively using their account.

In this case, LinkedIn is not the best platform to reach out to them, and you have to try a different outreach strategy. Either way, it’s unlikely to move forward with this lead. That’s why we’d suggest a ‘regular clean-up’ on your invites at least every other week.

Why You Should Remove Your Pending LinkedIn Connection Requests

Removing your pending requests will keep your profile out of the infamous LinkedIn jail.

Think about it from an algorithm perspective. How reliable would you consider an account that most people ignore or refuse to connect to?

If a connection request has been pending for a while, it’s probably time to call it quits.

1. Don’t run out of connection requests

There’s a limit on how many connection requests you can send on LinkedIn.

How many LinkedIn connection requests can you send? Depending on your network size and previous account activity, you can send between 100 and 200 connection requests weekly. LinkedIn doesn’t have an “official limit” on how many pending connection requests you can have on your account. However, LinkedIn notifies you when you’ve reached the limit.

When that happens, you have to remove old connections to access new ones. So, the more unnecessary connection requests you send now, the more work you’ll have to do later.

2. Remove old connections to free up space for new ones

If you've issued multiple connection requests in error or have numerous pending ones, you may cancel them anytime.

Removing old connection requests from your sent list can free up space for new ones.

Removing old, pending requests ensures that your networking efforts are focused on active, responsive users. You'll get more LinkedIn connections by sending connecting requests to the most relevant and responsive professionals.

Increase your chances of connecting with new LinkedIn members by tailoring each connection request to the individual, explaining how you know them and why they would benefit your network.

Note❗ If you revoke any connection request, you must wait three weeks before sending another invite to that person. Make a conscious decision before you withdraw!

3. Gather better insights to organize your data

Periodically checking your invites’ status and deleting connection invitations will remain more organized. You will better understand who is connecting with you and why they may have disregarded your request.

People can tell if you’re only sending out invites in bulk without actually researching if you’re a good connection for them or not. So chances are those invitations will go unanswered and need to be deleted quickly.

But there’s also the scenario where a connection might be a good fit, and you’ve crafted a great invite message tailored to the receiver, but the acceptance rate was still low.

If that’s the case, you’ll need to get back to the drawing board and analyze what did not work.

You’ll need to look through all of your invites and how you approached the situation. But if your pending connections are all cluttered, it will only make things harder for you.

How to Cancel Connection Requests on Desktop

Canceling or withdrawing your request shouldn’t take much time. On your desktop computer, you’ll need to access your network and then your invitation manager.

Simply following a few straightforward steps, you will be able to monitor the sent connection requests on your network:

1. Select My Network from your navigation bar.

2. Select See all in the upper right corner of the "Invitations" section.

3. Go to the Sent tab in the Manage invites section

4. All it takes to cancel a request is to select a request and then hit the Withdraw button.

To withdraw multiple invites, simply go down the list and click Withdraw on each request.

How to Remove Pending Invitations Requests on Mobile

Canceling a LinkedIn connection request is pretty much the same process on the mobile app as on the desktop version.

1. Select the My Network tab at the bottom of the app screen.

2. Find the Invitations link at the top of the screen.

3. Then switch over to the Sent tab.

4. Finally, tap the Withdraw button next to any profile with whom you wish to sever ties.

To withdraw multiple invites, simply go down the list and tap Withdraw on each request.

Does LinkedIn Remove Invitation Requests?

Yes, LinkedIn can automatically cancel pending connection requests, but only after the invitation has been pending for 6 months.

That means existing LinkedIn users and non-members will no longer be able to accept invitations made to them after six months.

To keep things tidy, LinkedIn periodically deletes invitations sent to inactive email addresses. If your invitee hasn't responded within the specified time, they’ll receive a gentle reminder twice before the invitation expires.

The purpose of sending a reminder is to bring the message back to the recipient's attention in case they forget about it. Further reminders are not sent when a recipient accepts, declines, or archives an invitation.

If an invitation has expired, it won't be shown as waiting, and you can send a second invitation to the same recipient. You can also cancel the invitation if you don't want to be bothered with further reminders.

Can You Remove LinkedIn Connection Requests in Bulk?

Typically, you can’t retract invitations to a large number of persons all at once.

If you typically send around 100 weekly invitations, you have 50 pending invitations weekly. Eventually, you'll end up with hundreds of pending invites, and manually removing them becomes impossible.

However, automated tools like ours can help you with your invite clean-up without worrying about your pending requests.

Automated tools allow you to set the number of days in which your invitation should be active. If after that x number of days, your invitation is not accepted, it will be withdrawn automatically.

Let’s say you sent 60 invites, and 20 of those go unanswered for two weeks. All of those 20 invites will be deleted after your chosen deadline (in this case, two weeks).

What Happens When Someone Declines My LinkedIn Invitation?

You cannot decline a connection request in the true sense of the word. You can either accept or ignore it. Whenever someone ignores a connection request, the sender of the request is not notified in any way.

The person who receives the request can either press the "Ignore" button or do nothing in response to the request.

If they do nothing, your invitation will continue to appear as a new message in their inbox for LinkedIn Invitations. LinkedIn may offer them a follow-up message to remind them about the request that you made.

So, if they’re not interested in you as a connection, the only way to decline it is to press Ignore. Once more, the recipient is not informed of the decision whenever a connection request is declined.

How to Beat the Weekly Limit for Sending Invites?

LinkedIn has a limit of 100 invites per week before it considers your account suspicious due to its anti-spam guidelines.

However, improving your acceptance rate is essential if you want to slightly increase that limit, especially if you’re performing outreach on a daily basis.

Warm up your account by starting up with a smaller number of weekly invites and working your way up while engaging your network with content and expert advice.

You can define your warm-up rules in a LinkedIn outreach tool to help increase your limits safely without getting flagged by LinkedIn.

On top of that, priming your audience is interacting with current content, and putting yourself out there as much as possible before connecting with them makes you a more valuable connection. This increases your acceptance rate, which will also help you surpass the 100-invite limit.

Wrapping It Up!

While most people ignore pending LinkedIn connection requests, you should clean up their pending invitations list.

To avoid any pending connection requests, build up your network by inviting colleagues, fellow alumni, industry peers, etc.

Every time you send a connection request, it's an opportunity for others to learn about you through your LinkedIn profile. Make a lasting impression with an impressive profile, enhanced with Taplio’s free profile feedback.

This AI-powered tool can provide valuable insights to help you craft a compelling headline, write an engaging summary, showcase your skills, and more, all of which can significantly boost your professional presence.

How to Manage Pending Connection Requests on LinkedIn Efficiently - Step-by-Step-Guide