How to Address a Cover Letter When You Don't Know Who's Hiring

If you need to address a cover letter without a name, "Dear Hiring Manager," is fine. It's polite and honest, and nobody is going to reject you because of it. It's still worth spending two minutes looking for a name first. If you find one, use it. If you don't, go with Dear Hiring Manager and move on.

You might be here because the whole letter is written and you're stuck on the first two words, worried the wrong greeting will put someone off before they read a single line. It won't. Here's all you need to know.

Where to look for a name

Check these three places:

• The job posting. Sometimes a hiring manager or recruiter is named near the bottom, or in the "how to apply" part.
• The company website. A team or about page might list who runs the department you're applying to.
• LinkedIn. Search the company name plus the title of the person you'd probably report to, like "marketing manager."

Give it a couple of minutes, not half an hour. Lots of companies don't make this public, so coming up empty is normal.

If you do find someone, use their full name: "Dear Priya Shah," for example. That way you don't have to guess between Mr., Ms., or Dr.

What to avoid

"To Whom It May Concern." It's not wrong, but it sounds like a letter to your electricity company. Dear Hiring Manager does the same job and sounds like a person wrote it.

"Dear Sir or Madam" or "Dear Sir." These feel old-fashioned, and "Dear Sir" assumes something you don't know.

A name you're not sure about. If you found a few possible people and can't tell which one is hiring, don't pick one and hope. Getting the name wrong looks worse than not using one at all.

These are small slip-ups. If you want to check your letter for the bigger ones, here are the cover letter mistakes that make hiring managers stop reading.

The greeting isn't what gets you the interview

Nobody gets hired because of their greeting. The line right after it matters a lot more. It's the first thing a hiring manager actually reads, and it's where most letters lose them. If you've got extra time, spend it there. This guide on how to open a cover letter walks through it.

That's usually the real problem. The greeting takes two seconds to sort out, but then you're staring at a blank first line, trying to say something about yourself that doesn't sound like every other applicant.

It's annoying to get stuck on two words when the rest of your application is ready to go. Take a quick look for a name. If there isn't one, Dear Hiring Manager is all you need.