How To Unblock Someone on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the biggest and most popular social media platforms oriented towards companies and professionals. The platform is all about creating valuable connections within your field of expertise for the purpose of gaining more experience, and learning new things. Many, of course, use it to search for the next job.

LinkedIn isn’t big on privacy, in general. You need transparency in order to showcase your knowledge and experience. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some methods to limit the number of people allowed to annoy you. Blocking is one of them.

Unblocking LinkedIn Accounts

Unblocking someone is very easy. Whether or not it’s something you should do, only you can know depending on your relationship or lack thereof with the person you previously blocked. Here’s how to go about unblocking former connections or random members.

1. Locate your profile picture icon in the top right corner.
2. Click on it to expand the menu.
3. Click “Privacy and Settings”.
4. Select “Blocking and hiding” from the left panel menu.
5. Select “Blocking” (it should be the second to last option in the “Privacy and Settings” page).
   
6. Browse through your block list and find the person you want to unblock.
7. Click on the “Unblock” button to the right of their name.

What Happens After Unblocking Someone on Linkedin?

Once a person is no longer featured on your block list two things happen. For one, your profile becomes unhidden for that person. Secondly, you will be able to exchange messages with them.

Note that if you unblock someone that used to be on your contact list, you won’t be automatically reconnected. You will have to go to that person’s profile page and hit the “Connect” button. Or, you could wait for them to send you the request.

More Privacy Settings

You can also hide your LinkedIn profile from non-members.

1. Click your profile picture or “Me” icon.
2. Click “View Profile”.
3. Go under the “Edit Visibility” tab.
4. Toggle the switch to off.

What this accomplishes is that no one without a Linkedin account may see the basic information on your profile. These include: name, connections, experience, headline, industry, region, and so on. Your URL may still pop up in search engines if someone searches your name but they won’t be able to see your personal information.

However, this doesn’t stop other members or people you’re connected with from seeing your profile. You can’t completely hide your profile from other members. What you can do instead, is control the information flow.

By customizing your profile you can choose to withhold certain changes that might make your life harder. Say for example, connecting to a headhunter, competitor, or former employer while you’re currently holding a job.

1. Click the “Me” icon.
2. Select “Settings and Privacy”.
3. Select “Who can see your connections”.
4. Click “Change”.
5. Select the “Only Me” option.

This prevents your employer or coworkers from seeing who you’ve recently connected with.

1. From the “Settings and Privacy” page.
2. Go to “Notifying connections when you’re in the news”.
3. Toggle the switch to “No”.

This setting prevents people from knowing about your contributions or mentions of you in certain blog posts that could affect your job security.

On the “Settings and Privacy” page, you will notice many other options that allow you to customize your profile and notifications both incoming and outgoing. You can even hide updated resumes from your boss if you’re not sure about switching jobs just yet.

Hiding Your Activity the Easy Way

If you don’t want to stop all communication with certain businesses or people on Linkedin, you don’t have to go the blocking route. From the “Blocking and hiding” subsection of your “Privacy” page, you can define who’s allowed to follow you.

When someone follows you, it means that they get updates with whatever changes you make public. You have two options for followers:

1. Everyone on LinkedIn
2. Your Connections

If you still want your profile and resume to be visible to recruiters outside your network, but also hide certain posts and updates, then using the latter option is advised. Do note that when you make the switch from everyone to your close network, the list of followers will shorten. Changes may take up to 24 hours to go into effect.

Final Thoughts

All social media platforms have their bad apples, LinkedIn included. While in this case you don’t have to worry as much about campaign ads, personal information stealing, and all that stuff, you can still run into annoying headhunters, disgruntled employees, or career trolls that can ruin your day.

Blocking people is a common practice for someone who uses LinkedIn religiously. However, there may come a time when blocking just seems too harsh. At least now you know how to customize your privacy settings and how to unblock people you might need later down the line.