LinkedIn is a social media platform that allows you to connect with other professionals, share your thoughts, access career opportunities, and learn career development skills.
Despite the importance of LinkedIn for professionals, some users find the concept of networking on this platform quite complicated. For instance, some might confuse the term “3rd” on LinkedIn.
3rd is a LinkedIn term used to describe your connection with other users who are directly connected to your 2nd-degree connections. You can tell that a person is a 3rd-degree connection when you see a 3rd icon boldly displayed next to their names in search results and on their profile.
In the section below, we will talk more about how to recognize your 3rd-degree connections and how to interact with them.
Who Is a 3rd-Degree Connection on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a social media platform that has helped millions of people across the globe develop their careers and access many career opportunities.
Like other social media platforms, the more extensive your network on LinkedIn, the more opportunities you are exposed to.
On LinkedIn, members of your network are known as your connections. However, there are different categories of connections on LinkedIn. These categories are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-degree connections.
Specifically, your 1st-degree connections on LinkedIn are the people who are directly connected to you. Meanwhile, 2nd-degree connections are people directly connected to your 1st-degree connections.
Our focus in this article is the 3rd-degree connection which is used for people directly connected to your 2nd-degree connections.
How To Interact With Your 3rd-Degree Connections on LinkedIn
Unlike your 1st-degree connections on LinkedIn, your 3rd-degree connections are not directly connected to you. However, you can still interact with them to a large extent.
You can get directly connected to your 3rd-degree connections when they accept your connection invite, or you accept theirs.
When that happens, they become your 1st-degree connection making it possible to message them and view their complete profile.
What Do 3rd-Degree Connections See About Me?
However, unless that happens, you can only see the public profile of your 3rd-degree connections. A public profile is an abridged version of their entire profile, which by default does not show their email and phone number.
Every LinkedIn user can control what their 3rd-degree connections see on their profile by editing their public profile. Hence, you can only see what your 3rd-degree connections want you to see on their profile.
Similarly, your 3rd-degree connections can only see what you want them to see on your profile. Nonetheless, the public profile can be as complete as the entire profile or have some aspects hidden.
Visit this link to edit your public profile on LinkedIn.
Can I Message a 3rd-Degree Connection?
If you are wondering how to message your 3rd-degree connections, it is impossible to do so unless you both belong to the same group. Notwithstanding, you can send your 3rd-degree connections an inmail.
An inmail is a private message that can be sent to everyone on LinkedIn. However, Inmail is a paid feature. Hence, you can only send an inmail if you are subscribed to LinkedIn premium, not the free version.
Inmails have been said to have a low response rate compared to sending direct messages when you are directly connected.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is a platform for managing your professional network. On LinkedIn, you can have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-degree connections.
We have discussed all there is to know about 3rd-degree connections.
Hence, the next time you see the 3rd icon in front of LinkedIn users’ names, you will know precisely what it means.
FAQs
Your 3rd-degree connections on LinkedIn won’t be notified when you withdraw your invitation to connect. However, they might notice if they saw the notification to connect when you sent it and cannot see it anymore after you withdrew it.
On LinkedIn, you can only send a direct message to people you are directly connected to. On the other hand, you can send an inmail to anyone on LinkedIn even when you are not connected to them. However, inmail is a premium feature that requires a subscription.
These are the degrees of connections on LinkedIn. Your first-degree connections are symbolized by the icon – 1st. These are people that are directly connected to you.
Meanwhile, your second-degree connections are represented by the icon – 2nd. These are people that are directly connected to your first-degree connections.
Lastly, your third-degree connections are symbolized by the icon – 3rd. These are people that are directly connected to your second-degree connections.
