How to Delete a LinkedIn Profile
One of these two options is reversible and the other is not, and the irreversible one takes your recommendations with it.
Open settings, go to account preferences, and choose to close your account. LinkedIn asks for a reason and your password, then closes it.
Before you do, consider hibernation: in the same area, hibernating hides the profile from everyone while keeping connections, recommendations and messages intact, and it reverses by signing in.
Closing is permanent. Recommendations, endorsements and your connection list are not restored if you come back.
The difference between the two is not convenience. It is what happens to things other people wrote about you.
Recommendations are the clearest case. Someone took twenty minutes to write one. It lives on your profile and it belongs to the connection between you. Close the account and it is gone, and the only way to get it back is to ask that person to write it again on a new profile.
Endorsements, skills and your connection history behave the same way. A profile rebuilt later starts with a date of joining that does not match the career it describes, which is visible to anybody who looks.
Hibernation was built for the situation people usually describe when they say they want to delete: not wanting to be on LinkedIn right now. The profile stops appearing in search and to other members, your name is removed from most surfaces, and signing in brings it all back.
There is one thing neither option handles. If you administer a company Page, closing your account does not close the Page — it leaves it with one fewer admin, and possibly with none, which is the orphaned-Page problem in its LinkedIn form.
Closing the account
Settings, account preferences, then account management, where closing sits.
LinkedIn asks why, which is for its own research, and then for your password.
The profile stops being visible almost immediately, and the data is removed over a period rather than instantly.
If you reopen within a short window after closing, some data can be restored. After that window it cannot, and LinkedIn is explicit that recommendations and endorsements do not come back.
Hibernating instead
Hibernation is in the same account management area. It hides the profile from search and from other members.
Your name is removed from things like comments and group posts while it is hibernated, replaced by a placeholder.
Messages you sent remain in other people's inboxes, which is true of every option here.
Signing in reactivates it, and everything returns in the state you left it.
Download your data first
LinkedIn can export your connections, messages, posts and profile content as an archive.
It takes time to prepare, so request it before you start closing anything.
The connections file is the useful one. It has names and companies, which is the part you cannot reconstruct later.
Recommendations are included as text, which at least means you can show them elsewhere even though the profile versions are gone.
Pages, groups and ad accounts you leave behind
A company Page with you as its only admin becomes unmanaged when your account closes. Add another admin first.
Groups you own need an owner transfer, or they are left without moderation.
Ad accounts have their own permission structure and billing, which does not follow the personal account out of the door.
This is the part people skip and it is the one that produces support tickets that cannot be resolved quickly.
When the real problem is notifications or recruiters
If the complaint is email volume, the notification settings are granular and most of the noise comes from three or four categories.
If it is recruiters, open to work and the recruiter visibility setting are the switches, and turning them off is instant.
If it is being findable by name, public profile visibility handles that without closing anything.
Closing an account to stop emails is the most expensive way to unsubscribe.
Questions people ask about closing an account
Can I get my LinkedIn profile back after deleting it?
Only within a short window after closing, and even then recommendations and endorsements are not restored.
What is the difference between hibernating and closing?
Hibernating hides the profile and keeps everything, reversing when you sign in. Closing deletes the account and the history attached to it.
Do my messages disappear when I close my account?
Messages you sent remain in the recipients' inboxes. Your copy goes with the account.
What happens to a company Page I manage?
It stays, without you. If you were the only admin it becomes unmanaged, so add another admin before closing.
Will my connections be told?
No notification is sent. Your profile simply stops appearing for them.
Can I delete just my public profile?
Yes. Turning off public profile visibility removes you from search engines while keeping the account inside LinkedIn.
Keep reading
- followers on a LinkedIn profile — A profile rebuilt after a closure starts from zero audience as well as zero history, and followers on a LinkedIn profile acts on the first half of that.
- hiding it instead of closing it — Most reasons for deleting are solved by a setting, and hiding it instead of closing it covers which one.
- removing people without leaving — If the problem is who follows you, removing people without leaving is the narrower tool.