Alternatives to inviting someone to connect

Last updated: 8 months ago
LinkedIn members have conveyed that they don’t like receiving invitations from people they don’t know, and that they will often ignore or mark those invitations as spam.

We have invitation limits in place to protect our overall member experience and to ensure that our members only receive relevant requests. Your LinkedIn account (Basic or Premium) may be temporarily restricted from sending invitations if you’ve reached the invitation limit.

To ensure that LinkedIn remains a safe community, we recommend that you only send invitations to people you know and trust, in accordance with LinkedIn’s User Agreement and Professional Community Policies. By sending fewer and more thoughtful invitations to connect with others, you will improve: the relevance of content shown in your feed, your search results, and your experience in using other LinkedIn features, to help you discover opportunities on LinkedIn.

  • Follow someone to see the updates and new content that they share in your feed, and establish familiarity by interacting with their posts.

  • Find and join a group that’s relevant to you, so you can meet other professionals with similar interests.

  • Send an InMail to introduce yourself and explain why you’d like to connect with someone you haven’t met yet.

  • Use Sales Navigator to help you find the right prospects faster with customized insights, like lead recommendations and company updates.

  • Run a search in Recruiter to find the best candidates and send messages to applicants or send an InMail to contact LinkedIn members who haven’t applied for your job but might be strong candidates.

Here are some alternative ways to network with others, rather than inviting someone to connect:

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