A few weeks ago, I received an email from a contact. She had quit her job and her networking and semi-retired to take enjoy golf and grandkids. Good for her!

Her question to me was “How do I delete my LinkedIn profile?” My answer back was “Don’t.”

Why?

You put a lot of time into creating that profile, and you’ve worked hard to build your network of connections. Why would you want to lose all that? You might not need it again, but you never know what the future will bring, and it’s better to have it inactive for a while, ready to activate, than to build it back up again.

Obviously, if you have a paid account, you’ll want to downgrade to the free account, but an inactive LinkedIn profile doesn’t hurt anything. If you unsubscribe from group notifications and change your privacy settings so people can’t find you easily, you’ll get barely any email from LinkedIn.

Going inactive means you don’t lose anything you worked so hard to build, and it’s there, ready if you need it in the future.

Now all this assumes that you have a good, well-built LinkedIn profile to start with. If not, give me a call. I can help you with that!