When you’re applying for a job, you usually don’t just send your application into the abyss and hope for the best—you send it directly to the hiring manager who’s tasked with filling that position. Beyond demonstrating why you’re the ideal fit for the role, your application’s job is to make a connection with that hiring manager. This is why it’s so important that you get their name right in your cover letter.
But getting the hiring manager’s name right means nothing if you can’t find their email address. You could have the perfect resume and the best cover letter in a pile, but if your job application ends up in the wrong inbox, you’re out of the running. It sounds simple and even obvious, but it’s not always easy to find the right email address for a job application. With the right tools, though, it can be.
How to Find Hiring Manager’s Email Address
There are a few different ways you can find a hiring manager’s email address. In many cases, it’s right in the job description or can easily be found on the company website. In other cases, you might have to do a little bit more digging, either via Google or on social media.
Look at the job posting
Finding a hiring manager’s email address is much easier when you know where to look. The first place to look is the job posting. Often, a contact email is listed in a job posting—this is the email address where you should send your application and any questions you have about the position, the company, or the application process.
Check the company’s website
When there isn’t a contact email address listed in a job posting, the next place to look is the company’s website. Look for a team directory or a page that lists the team member’s bios and contact information. In many instances, this is where you’ll find the email address you’re looking for.
Google it
But not every website displays its team members’ email addresses. So when you can’t find the email address you need on the company’s website, the next step is to Google it.
Search for keywords related to the role, like the company name + “director of marketing” or “finance manager.” Think of these keywords as the starting point, not the endpoint for your search—with advanced search operators, you can make your search far more precise and much more accurate. Here are a few commonly used search operators that can help you find a hiring manager’s email address:
- “” around your keyword to search only for exact matches. For example, searching for “hiring@website.com” will bring back only results that include this exact phrase.
- @ before a username searches for that specific social media handle. For example, you might google @irinamaltseva to find this individual’s social media profiles.
Additionally, you can combine the hiring manager’s name with target keywords like email and contact to improve your likelihood of finding their email address via Google.
Check out LinkedIn
Ideally, your search will bring up a LinkedIn profile for the person whose email you’re trying to find. Through LinkedIn, you can find their name, job title, email address, and other potentially relevant information that can help your job application, like recent company initiatives to address in your cover letter or during the interview.
Don’t forget to check social media profiles
Your search might also bring up profiles on other social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. These, too, can be useful places to find the hiring manager’s email address. If you find a social media profile and it doesn’t include the email address you need, you can also simply ask for it. Just shoot over a DM and ask for the email address of the right contact person for the role to which you’re applying. This strategy works not only with personal profiles but if the only social media profile you can find is the company’s public page. Sometimes you can also find company email address on their social media pages.
I Know Their Name and Company
If you know the hiring manager’s name and the company they work for, you’re in luck! You’ve got two pieces of information that will make it much easier to find their email address.
With tools like Email Finder, you’ll be able to find the hiring manager’s email address in seconds.
Just type in the full name and the company name in a search box and click on the search icon:
You’ll get a verified email address of the person you’re looking for right away:
If you still have doubts regarding the name of the hiring manager, we recommend you to check it on LinkedIn.
Go and find the company page on LinkedIn, then click on the “See all X employees on LinkedIn.”
LinkedIn will show you the list of all of the employees working for this company. Now, you need to apply the position filters to find the name of the hiring manager.
To do it, go “All filters’ → “Keywords” → “Title.”
Enter the title of the person you’re looking for: human resources, recruiter, hiring manager, etc. And get the list of people relevant to the position.
This is a simple way to double-check if you have the correct name of the hiring manager and to find the name of the hiring manager if you don’t know it yet.
I Know Their Company, but Not Their Name
If you tried to use LinkedIn to find the hiring manager’s name and couldn’t find it, you’ll need to use another strategy. If all you have to work with is the company’s name, try a domain search to find the correct email address for the hiring manager.
When you use Hunter’s Domain Search tool, you get a list of all publicly listed emails of people currently working for that company. Hunter maintains this up-to-date database by crawling hundreds of thousands of websites every minute to find and index relevant business data. Now, we have more than 100 million email addresses indexed.
Once you’ve got a list of email addresses for a company, filter that list according to the department you’re looking for.
For example, you might filter it to show only email addresses in the Human Resources department. From there, you should be able to find the email address you’re looking for.
I Read the Hiring Manager's Article, and Now I Want to Contact Them
Imagine you read something really great—a thoughtful article, a super-cool infographic—and now you want to work with the team that made that happen. Hunter’s Author Finder tool is another way to find a hiring manager’s email address—or really, any email address.
Here’s how the Author Finder works:
- Paste (or type) the post URL whose author you want to locate into the input field.
- If the tool can locate the author’s email address, it will show the author’s name, email address, and company.
You can use this tool to find a piece’s author for any reason. Maybe they aren’t a decision-maker at their company, but they can connect you with somebody who is. Or perhaps you’re looking for collaboration rather than a position with their employer. That’s another circumstance where this tool can be your best friend.
Always Check; Never Assume
Even if you think you have the correct email address for the hiring manager filling the position you’re seeking, double-check it.
Verifying an email address is critical because if you send your email to the wrong address, you risk:
- Having it bounce back to you or
- Sending it to the completely wrong person
In either case, your email won’t reach the person it needs to reach, and it affects your deliverability rates.
There are few feelings worse than pouring your heart into a well-crafted introductory email for an important job application and then having the email bounce back just seconds after sending it because the address you sent it to isn’t valid. Hunter’s Email Verifier can help you ensure your email will reach a valid address—and that the email address you’re sending it to is free of spelling and typo errors.
To use Email Verifier, type an email address into the input box. The tool will then show whether the email is valid or not.
What Can I Do if I Absolutely Can’t Find an Email Address?
Sometimes, no matter what you do, you just can’t find the email address you need. Maybe it’s because the company is very small, like a brand-new startup, or only consists of one person. When that’s the case, the best thing to do is reach out to the company’s Human Resources department—if they have one. Do an online search for the company name and reach out to whichever email or phone number appears to be the best bet to get you to HR. Even an automated chatbot, like the ones many companies employ on their homepages, can potentially help you find the email address you’re looking for.
But what if your search brings up nothing? We don’t want to jump to conclusions here, but there is the possibility that you’re looking at a fraudulent job posting. Job posting scams exist, and when it’s impossible to find any kind of contact information about a company, that can be a red flag. Be cautious when you respond to job postings like these and never give out personal information until you’ve conclusively determined that a posting is legitimate.
If a position and company appear legitimate and your only issue is that you can’t find the hiring manager’s email address, you can send an email with a greeting like “Dear Hiring Manager” or “Dear Recruiter.” For help crafting an email like this, take a look at our templates for the best-performing emails to send to recruiters.
For more tips on writing a professional email that will get a hiring manager’s attention and ideally set you up for an interview, read our blog post on how to write a professional email. This blog post is a step-by-step guide to writing winning emails that make you look and sound your best.
Make Finding Hiring Managers’ Emails a Snap
Remember, you don’t only need a hiring manager’s email address for your job application and cover letter. You’ll also need it to send a thank you direct message after your interview and for any questions you have during the application and interview process. By getting the hiring manager’s email address—and name—correct, you not only cut down on wasted time by eliminating any need for the email’s recipient to forward it to the valid address, you demonstrate that you prioritize the application enough to put in the work to do it properly. That’s a trait just about every employer seeks in prospective employees, and it will make your application stand out above the others that didn’t take the time to ensure they had the hiring manager’s name and email address correct.
Once you’ve got the right email address, you need an introductory email that grabs their attention and shows them exactly why you’re the best fit for the role. Check out our templates library to see the emails other successful job applicants have used and find inspiration for the perfect application email of your own.
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