LinkedIn has become an essential platform for networking and building your professional brand. With over 800 million members, LinkedIn offers unmatched opportunities to connect with colleagues, partners, and potential employers. However, there may be times when you want to temporarily hide your LinkedIn profile.
Why Would You Want to Hide Your LinkedIn Profile?
There are a few common reasons why someone may want to temporarily hide their LinkedIn profile:
- You’re currently employed but discreetly looking for a new job opportunity. Hiding your profile means recruiters won’t know you’re open to being contacted.
- You’re taking a break from your career, whether it’s parental leave, sabbatical, further studies, etc. Hiding your profile sends the message you’re unavailable for opportunities.
- You want a break from networking and communicating with connections. Hiding your profile pauses notifications and new connection requests.
- You’re concerned about privacy and want to limit access to your personal information. Hiding your profile removes your details from public view.
Is It Possible to Hide Your LinkedIn Profile?
Yes, LinkedIn does give you the option to temporarily hide your profile. However, it’s important to understand exactly what hiding your profile does:
- Your public profile will not appear in LinkedIn search results.
- You will not appear as a suggested connection to others.
- You can still sign in to LinkedIn and access your account.
- Your existing connections can still see your profile.
- You won’t receive notifications or new messages, but existing conversations remain accessible.
- You can re-activate your profile and make it public again at any time.
So in summary, hiding your profile removes you from public visibility but doesn’t disable your account. Your connections and activity remain intact for when you want to re-activate your profile.
How to Temporarily Hide Your LinkedIn Profile
Hiding your LinkedIn profile only takes a few simple steps:
- Sign in to your LinkedIn account on desktop.
- Click on your profile photo in the top right corner.
- Select ‘View profile’ from the dropdown menu.
- Scroll down and click on ‘Visibility’ on the right side of your profile.
- Choose to ‘Make my profile visible only to people I’ve approved’.
- Confirm that you want to hide your profile for now.
Your profile will now be hidden from public view but remain fully accessible to you.
When you’re ready to make your profile public again, just repeat the steps above and choose ‘Make my profile visible to everyone’. Your profile will then reappear in LinkedIn search results.
What Happens When You Re-Activate Your Profile?
Making your hidden LinkedIn profile public again is a quick and simple process:
- All your profile information, connections, and activity will be restored.
- You’ll start receiving notifications and messages again as normal.
- Your profile will appear in LinkedIn searches.
- Connection requests and recruiter contacts may increase at first.
- Your profile views and engagement will gradually return to previous levels.
Essentially, unhiding your profile puts you back in the LinkedIn community just as you were before.
In most cases, temporarily hiding your profile leaves no lasting impact once you re-activate it. However, an exceptionally long absence could make your profile seem less active to connections.
Best Practices for Hiding Your LinkedIn Profile
To ensure temporarily hiding your profile is as seamless as possible, keep these best practices in mind:
- Let close connections know you’re hiding your profile so they understand your absence.
- Keep your profile updated before and after any hidden period.
- Hide your profile for an appropriate duration aligned with your needs.
- Stay engaged with LinkedIn through your feed and messaging when hidden.
- Gradually resume networking when you re-activate your profile.
Following these tips will help minimize any disruption from hiding your profile. Being transparent with your network and maintaining some activity during the process are key.
Pros of Temporarily Hiding Your Profile
Along with the reasons for hiding your profile, there are some advantages to doing so:
- Reduced messages and notifications: Pausing your notifications can provide a needed break from the steady stream of contacts.
- Increased privacy: Removing yourself from public view limits access to your personal details.
- Career break: Indicates to connections you are temporarily unavailable for opportunities.
- Discreet job search: Lets you evaluate options without signaling to current employer.
- Networking break: Gives you time to refocus away from constant communications.
For many professionals, the ability to temporarily disengage from LinkedIn’s nonstop networking is a significant benefit.
Cons of Hiding Your LinkedIn Profile
However, it’s also important to consider potential downsides:
- Missed opportunities: Recruiters, partners, or colleagues may reach out while you’re hidden.
- Reduced visibility: Being absent from search results can diminish your professional presence.
- Fewer profile views: An inactive profile loses traffic and engagement over time.
- Stalled networking: Your professional relationships may stagnate without regular contact.
- Perception Issues: An unexplained absence could be misconstrued by connections.
The reduced visibility and networking are especially impactful for those looking to actively build their career. So assess whether it’s worth compromising those aspects for a temporary break.
Alternatives to Hiding Your Profile
Given the potential drawbacks, you may want to consider alternatives to hiding your LinkedIn profile:
- Use LinkedIn’s Do Not Disturb feature to pause notifications.
- Unfollow connections and groups to reduce noise in your feed.
- Limit profile views with LinkedIn’s Connections setting.
- Leverage LinkedIn Career Break to indicate you’re not job seeking.
- Update your preferences to control how recruiters reach you.
These options allow you to pull back from LinkedIn’s intensity without fully hiding your profile. Determine which controls provide enough of a break versus needing to go fully incognito temporarily.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are answers to some common questions about hiding your LinkedIn profile:
Does hiding my profile also stop recruiters from contacting me?
Yes, recruiters will not be able to find or contact you while your profile is hidden. Any existing conversations remain accessible.
Can I hide my profile on mobile app?
No, LinkedIn’s hide profile feature is only available on the desktop website, not the mobile app.
Do my connections get notified if I hide my profile?
No, hiding your profile happens behind the scenes without notifications sent to your connections. However, you should proactively inform close contacts.
What happens if I apply for jobs while my profile is hidden?
You can still apply for opportunities, but you won’t show up in recruiter searches. Essentially, you need to be findable for recruiters to view your profile.
Will hiding my profile hurt my LinkedIn algorithm?
It shouldn’t directly hurt your algorithm, but inactivity can gradually reduce your profile’s visibility in searches and feeds. Just remain engaged.
Conclusion
Temporarily hiding your LinkedIn profile can provide a valuable respite from constant connectivity and enable a career break or discreet job search. While not without risks, hiding your profile is a simple process that can be reversed anytime.
Consider whether alternatives like Do Not Disturb or Connections limits provide enough of a breather before fully hiding your profile. If going incognito meets your needs, hide your profile strategically, stay networked behind the scenes, and proactively re-activate your profile when ready.
