Thinking about deleting or removing a LinkedIn connection? Don’t worry there’s probably a good reason for it.

For example when I first set up my LinkedIn profile, I went through a phase of adding each and every college friend I knew and accepted connection requests from everyone and anyone who sent one my way — anything to get closer to 500+ contacts.

Well…now that I’ve accepted LinkedIn is not Facebook and realized it’s a platform for professionals to connect with other professionals to exchange services, ideas, common experiences, and even find jobs. It may be time for a little spring cleaning.

This week’s social media tutorial will cover how to delete or remove a LinkedIn connection.

SEE ALSO: How to Find a Job on LinkedIn

When you find the connections manager, you’ll be able to filter connections based on the first letter of their last name. This is tremendously helpful when looking for specific connections and you can also select numerous connections to remove at a time.

Video Tutorial

Reasons why you may remove a LinkedIn Connection

Now you may have your own reasons for removing a LinkedIn connection but here’s a few reasons I’ve experienced.

1. Mistaken Identity: I once sent a request to a person I thought was a friend from college, only to find out it wasn’t even the same person! The fact that they had no profile picture didn’t help either.
2. Bad experience: If you’ve had a falling out with a co-worker or employer it may be best to part ways.
3. Not inline with your goals: Your LinkedIn profile should focus on benefiting your career path. That way the people you connect with can refer you to relevant jobs or share information about what you’re interested in. The sooner you have career goals the better.

What about hurt feelings?

One important thing to remember is that the connections you remove will not be notified that you’ve just removed them…which is probably a good thing. However they will be added to your list of contacts in case you want to re-invite them later. Of course if they look up your profile, they’ll see you are no longer connected.

Take time to consider whether or not to remove a connection. For example, I’m still relatively young in my career having recently graduated. Some of my connections aren’t focused on the same industry as I am, however as we grow up there’s no telling where they’ll end up and what opportunities may be passed my way in the future because of a connection I made today.

In the end, the choice is yours. But I’d like to know…

What are some other reasons you’d remove a LinkedIn Connection?