How to Address a Cover Letter Without a Name

A job posting that doesn't name a hiring manager is the norm, not the exception, so this is one of the most common cover letter questions people run into. The good news is that the right answer is simple once you know where to look and when to stop looking.

Should You Look for a Name Before Defaulting to "Dear Hiring Manager"?

Spend a few minutes checking for a name before you settle on a generic greeting. The job posting itself sometimes names a recruiter or hiring manager, even if it's buried near the bottom or in the "how to apply" section. If it doesn't, the company's LinkedIn page often does: search for the relevant department (marketing, engineering, finance) and look for a manager or director title that matches the seniority of the role you're applying for. Our guide on finding the hiring manager on LinkedIn walks through the exact search technique if you want the full method.

What Should You Do When There Really Is No Name?

"Dear Hiring Manager" is the standard, professional default when you can't find a name after a reasonable search. It's neutral, it's expected, and no recruiter reads it as a sign of laziness. What reads badly is guessing at a name and getting it wrong, or addressing the wrong person because you found an outdated LinkedIn profile. If you're not confident the name you found is current and correct, "Dear Hiring Manager" is the safer choice.

Can You Address a Team or Department Instead?

If the job posting names a department but not a person, "Dear Marketing Team" or "Dear Engineering Hiring Team" is a reasonable middle ground between a named individual and a fully generic greeting. It shows you read the posting closely enough to know who you'd be writing to, even without a specific name.

Which Greetings Should You Avoid?

"To Whom It May Concern" is the one greeting worth avoiding entirely. It reads as outdated and impersonal, more suited to a formal legal letter than a job application. Also watch the time you spend on this: five minutes of looking is reasonable, twenty minutes isn't. Past that point, you're better off writing a strong opening paragraph than continuing to search for a name that isn't easily discoverable.

How Do You Format the Greeting Once You Have a Name?

How you address a name you've found depends on the industry and how formal the company's own communications sound. "Dear Sarah Johnson" (full name, no title) works well for most modern workplaces and sidesteps the guesswork of whether someone prefers Mr, Ms, Mx, or a professional title you can't verify from a LinkedIn profile. In more traditional sectors, law, finance, or the public sector, "Dear Ms Johnson" is the safer default. If you can't tell someone's preferred title from what you've found, using the full name avoids the problem entirely without looking careless.

What If the Posting Comes From a Recruitment Agency?

Agency postings are a special case. The contact listed is usually a recruiter managing several roles at once, not someone at the actual hiring company, and addressing the letter to them by name is still the right call since they're your first point of contact. What doesn't work is guessing the name of someone at the client company the agency hasn't named, since agencies often keep the employer's identity anonymous until later in the process. Stick to addressing the recruiter directly in these cases, using whatever name appears on the posting or their LinkedIn profile.

How Should You Open Your First Sentence When You Don't Have a Name?

The greeting line sets the formality. The opening sentence sets the tone, and when you open with "Dear Hiring Manager," it carries extra weight because there is nothing personalised above it. The most common mistake is starting with "I am writing to apply for..." which turns up at the top of a large share of applications and tells the recruiter nothing about why you specifically want this role.

Lead instead with the reason you are interested in this company or role, or with a short, specific achievement that is directly relevant to what the job description asks for. "The focus on product-led growth in this role matches three years of work I have spent building exactly that" does more in the first five seconds than any version of "I would like to express my interest in." The content of the first line is where the decision to keep reading gets made, not the greeting above it.

For more on how this fits together, see How to Write a Cover Letter That Actually Gets Read, Cover Letter Best Practices: The Complete Guide, and How to Find the Hiring Manager for a Job on LinkedIn.