How to Write a Cover Letter to a Hiring Manager

A cover letter addressed to a real person reads differently than one that opens with "To Whom It May Concern." The first signals you did your homework. The second signals you sent the same letter to forty companies.

Here is the short version: find the hiring manager's name, open with "Dear Mr./Ms. [Last Name]," and if you genuinely can't find a name after a real search, use "Dear Hiring Manager," — never "To Whom It May Concern" or "Dear Sir or Madam." Career centers at MIT, Tufts, and the University of Arizona all give the same advice.

This guide walks through how to find the name, exactly how to write the greeting, what to do when no name exists, a full example you can copy the structure of, and the mistakes that quietly sink otherwise good letters.

Why addressing the right person matters

The hiring manager is the person who actually owns the open role — usually the manager you'd report to, not a recruiter or an HR coordinator. They're the one who decides whether your application moves forward.

A generic greeting tells that person nothing. A named greeting tells them you treated this application as a real opportunity, not a number in a mass-apply spreadsheet. It's a small detail, but small details are what separate the top of the pile from the middle of it.

The catch: the name usually isn't handed to you. You have to go find it.

How to find the hiring manager's name

Work through these in order. Most of the time you'll have a name within ten minutes.

1. Reread the job posting. This sounds obvious, but the name (or a reporting line like "reports to the Director of Engineering") is often buried in the description or the application email address. An address like j.okafor@company.com is a strong hint that the contact is someone with the initial J and surname Okafor.

2. Search the company on LinkedIn. Go to the company page, click People, and filter by title — "Engineering Manager," "Head of Marketing," "Talent Acquisition," whatever matches the role. The person hiring is usually the manager of the team you'd join. UT Austin's career services recommends naming the hiring manager whenever you can identify them.

3. Check the company website. Look at the About, Team, or Leadership page. Smaller companies often list everyone, which makes the hiring manager easy to spot.

4. Call or email the company. Tufts suggests calling the employer to confirm the name and its correct spelling. A short, polite ask works: *"Hi, I'm applying for the Product Designer role and I'd like to address my cover letter to the right person. Could you tell me who's leading the hiring for that position?"*

5. Ask your network. If anyone in your network works at the company — or knows someone who does — a one-line message often gets you the name faster than any search.

A quick reference for where to look first:

How to address it once you have the name

Once you've found the name, the greeting itself is simple. A few rules keep it professional:

• Use "Dear" plus a courtesy title and the last name. *Dear Ms. Okafor,* — not *Dear Jordan Okafor,* and not *Dear Jordan,*. Tufts specifically advises using the surname only: "Dear Ms. Smith" rather than "Dear Mary Smith."
• Use "Ms." for women, never "Mrs." or "Miss." Marital status has no place in a job application, and you usually don't know it anyway.
• End with a comma. *Dear Ms. Okafor,* is standard for US business letters. A colon is acceptable in very formal contexts, but the comma is the safe default.
• When you're unsure of gender or pronouns, use the full name. *Dear Jordan Okafor,* avoids guessing wrong. The University of Arizona lists *"Dear Lorraine Jimenez,"* and *"Dear Dr. Phillips,"* as standard greetings.
• Use an earned professional title if it applies. If the person holds a doctorate, *Dear Dr. Phillips,* is correct and respectful.

So a good greeting looks like one of these:

> Dear Ms. Okafor,

> Dear Dr. Phillips,

> Dear Jordan Okafor,

What to do when you can't find a name

Sometimes the name genuinely isn't public — a confidential search, a hiring committee, or a posting routed through a third-party recruiter. That's fine. The quality of your letter matters far more than whether you dug up a name that wasn't available.

When you've done a real search and come up empty, use one of these:

• Dear Hiring Manager, — the standard, recommended fallback across every career center cited here.
• Dear Hiring Committee, — when a panel or search committee is clearly involved (common in academia and senior roles).
• Dear [Team] Team, — for example, *Dear Engineering Team,* or *Dear Marketing Team,* when you know the department but not the person.
• A subject line instead of a salutation — Tufts notes you can open with something like *"Re: Application for Research Analyst Position"* in place of a greeting.

What to never use:

• To Whom It May Concern — outdated and impersonal. Every source here tells you to skip it.
• Dear Sir or Madam — same problem, plus it assumes a binary you have no reason to assume.
• Hi there / Hey — too casual for a formal document.

A full cover letter example

Here's a complete example for a hypothetical candidate, Maya Reyes, applying for a Product Marketing Manager role at a fictional company called Northwind Analytics. She found the hiring manager's name on LinkedIn.

> Dear Mr. Okafor, > > I'm writing to apply for the Product Marketing Manager role at Northwind Analytics. I've spent the last four years taking technical analytics products to market for non-technical buyers — the exact gap your job posting describes between what your platform does and how clearly that value lands with finance teams. > > At my current company, I rebuilt the messaging for our flagship reporting tool and ran the launch that followed. In two quarters, trial-to-paid conversion rose from 11% to 19%, and the sales team finally had a one-line pitch they actually used. I'd want to bring that same discipline — talk to customers, find the real objection, write until the value is obvious — to Northwind. > > What pulled me toward your team specifically is your focus on self-serve onboarding. I've seen how much a clear first-run experience moves activation, and I have concrete ideas about how marketing and product can own that handoff together. > > I'd welcome the chance to talk through how I could help Northwind reach the finance buyers your product is built for. Thank you for your time and consideration. > > Sincerely, > Maya Reyes

Notice what the greeting does: it names a specific person, and everything after it stays specific too. The salutation sets the tone, but it only works because the body backs it up.

Common mistakes to avoid

A few errors come up again and again:

• Defaulting to "To Whom It May Concern" without trying to find a name. It reads as effort skipped, not effort impossible.
• Guessing the wrong name. Addressing the recruiter when the manager is the real decision-maker — or simply misspelling the name — undercuts the whole point. Confirm spelling before you send.
• Over-familiarity. *Dear Jordan,* on a first-contact cover letter is too casual for most companies. Use the courtesy title and surname unless you already know the person.
• Using "Mrs." or "Miss." Always "Ms." for women.
• Forgetting the greeting entirely and jumping straight into the first paragraph. The salutation is part of the format; skipping it looks like a missing piece.
• A perfect greeting on a generic letter. Finding the name is step one. If the body could be sent to any company, the personalized greeting just makes the contrast more obvious.

FAQ

Should I use "Dear Hiring Manager" or "To Whom It May Concern"?

Always "Dear Hiring Manager." Career centers at MIT, Tufts, the University of Arizona, and UT Austin all recommend "Dear Hiring Manager" as the fallback and explicitly advise against "To Whom It May Concern" and "Dear Sir or Madam." The first reads as professional; the others read as outdated.

How do I find the hiring manager's name?

Start with the job posting, then check the company's LinkedIn "People" tab filtered by relevant titles, then the company website's About or Team page. If those fail, call the company and politely ask who's leading the hiring for that role. Your own network is often the fastest route of all.

Do I use a comma or a colon after the greeting?

A comma is the standard default for US cover letters — *Dear Ms. Okafor,*. A colon is acceptable in very formal or traditional business writing, but you can't go wrong with a comma.

What if I'm not sure whether the hiring manager is a man or a woman?

Use their full name without a courtesy title — *Dear Jordan Okafor,*. This avoids guessing wrong on "Mr." or "Ms." and stays completely professional.

Reach the hiring manager, not just the inbox

A cover letter addressed to the right person only helps if that person actually sees it. The most reliable way to make sure of that is to reach the hiring manager directly instead of relying on the application portal to route you there.

That's where Articuler fits in. Instead of applying and hoping, you can find the actual person hiring for the role using semantic search across 980M+ professional profiles, then send a personalized note that gets a reply — Articuler's AI outreach sees reply rates of 40–60% versus the 5–8% cold-email baseline. Pair a well-addressed cover letter with a direct line to the person who owns the decision, and you stop disappearing into the ATS. For more on the application side, see our guide on getting an AI resume review.