The short answer
Spend ten minutes looking for a name — the posting, the company team page, LinkedIn filtered by company and function, and the recruiter who published the vacancy will find one most of the time. If they do not, "Dear Hiring Manager" is the correct fallback. Skip "To Whom It May Concern", skip "Dear Sir or Madam", and never guess at a title such as Mrs when you do not know it.
What matters most
- A named greeting is worth finding: four searches will produce a name for most advertised roles.
- "Dear Hiring Manager" is the correct fallback and carries no stigma. "To Whom It May Concern" does.
- Do not guess at Mr, Mrs or Ms when the name is ambiguous — use the full name instead.
- Where the posting instructs you to address it a particular way, that instruction beats every general rule here.
Finding the name, in order of effort
Run these in sequence and stop as soon as you have a name you are confident about. Most advertised roles give one up inside ten minutes.
- 1Read the posting again, properly
Names appear in the contact line, in the "report to" sentence, in a quotation from the hiring manager, and in the file name of an attached job description. This is skipped more often than any other step.
- 2Check who published the vacancy
On LinkedIn, Indeed and most applicant tracking portals the posting shows a poster. That is frequently the recruiter and sometimes the hiring manager, and either is a legitimate person to address.
- 3Search LinkedIn by company and function
Filter people at the company and search for the plausible title — "Head of Finance", "Nursing Director", "Engineering Manager". For a team of any size, one or two names will be obviously right.
- 4Look at the company site
About, Team, Leadership and Contact pages, plus the byline on their blog. Smaller organisations list everyone; larger ones list the leadership, which is usually enough to identify the department head.
- 5Call the switchboard
Old-fashioned and still effective for small and mid-sized employers. "I am applying for the practice manager role — who should the letter be addressed to?" takes twenty seconds and receptionists answer it routinely.
- 6Stop and use the fallback
If ten minutes has produced nothing, the name is deliberately withheld or the vacancy is agency-managed. Use Dear Hiring Manager and spend the remaining time on the letter itself.
Which greeting to use
| Situation | Use | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| You have a full name and know the title | Dear Ms Whitfield, | Correct and conventional. Ms is the default for women in professional correspondence regardless of marital status. |
| You have a name but the title is ambiguous | Dear Alex Whitfield, | Full name, no honorific. Completely acceptable and avoids guessing at gender or marital status. |
| The person holds a doctorate or is a physician | Dear Dr Nandakumar, | Use it where it is genuinely held. Standard in academia, medicine and research, where omitting it can read as carelessness. |
| You know the department but not the person | Dear Nursing Recruitment Team, | Specific enough to show you know where the letter is going. Better than a generic fallback. |
| You know nothing | Dear Hiring Manager, | The standard, accepted fallback in the US and most English-speaking markets. It carries no penalty. |
| A named selection panel | Dear Members of the Selection Committee, | Common in academia, healthcare and public sector recruitment, where a committee genuinely reviews the applications. |
Punctuation is a minor question with a clear answer: a comma after the name in most markets, a colon in formal American business correspondence. Either is safe. What is not safe is no punctuation at all, or an exclamation mark.
The greetings to stop using
- To Whom It May Concern. It concerns a specific person doing a specific job, and this phrase announces that you did not establish who. It reads as a letter written for nobody, which is exactly what a screener is trying to filter out.
- Dear Sir or Madam. Formal, dated, and it forces a binary on someone you have never met. Still current in some legal and public sector correspondence in the UK, but a poor default in the US.
- Dear Sirs. Assumes the reader is a man. In recruitment, where women hold most human resources and talent roles, this is both wrong and conspicuous.
- Hi / Hey / Hello there. Fine in a follow-up email once a conversation exists. Too casual for a first approach to a stranger, even in an informal industry.
- Dear Mrs Whitfield, when you do not know. Assuming marital status is a needless risk. Ms exists precisely so you do not have to make that call.
- Dear [Company Name] Team. Vague to the point of being a non-greeting, and it usually means the writer did not look. A named department beats it every time.
To Whom It May Concern: I am writing to express my interest in the Registered Nurse position I found listed on your website.
Dear Ms Alvarez, Your posting for a night charge nurse on the cardiac step-down unit describes a rota that has been running short since the unit expanded, which is the situation I inherited at St Aubin two years ago.
Three awkward cases
The vacancy is handled by an agency
Address the recruiter you are dealing with by name, not the end employer, whose identity you may not even know. The letter still has to argue for the role, because the recruiter forwards it, but the greeting belongs to the person actually reading it first.
The posting is anonymous
Employers hide their identity when they are replacing someone who does not know yet, when they do not want competitors to read their hiring plans, or when a confidential restructure is under way. There is no name to find and no point looking for one. Use "Dear Hiring Manager" and get on with it.
You are applying internally
Use the greeting you would use in an ordinary email to that person. If you call them by their first name at work, "Dear Michael" is correct and "Dear Mr Osei" is odd. Formality that does not match your existing relationship reads as stiffness rather than respect.
Where the greeting goes
On a formal letter, the salutation sits below the date and the recipient's address block and above the opening paragraph — the layout conventions are set out in Purdue's cover letter guidance. In an email, the greeting is simply the first line of the message, with no address block above it. In a form text box, some people drop the greeting entirely; including it is better, because it makes the text read as a letter rather than as notes.
One caveat that overrides everything above: if the application instructions tell you how to address the letter, follow them exactly. Some employers use the salutation as a quiet compliance check, and a substantial number of applicants fail it.
The cover letter builder keeps the greeting, header and sign-off consistent across every version you send, which matters more than it sounds when you are applying to fifteen employers and editing the same file.
Questions people actually ask
How do I address a cover letter without a name?
Use "Dear Hiring Manager". It is the accepted fallback in the US and most English-speaking markets and carries no penalty. If you know the department, "Dear Nursing Recruitment Team" or the equivalent is better still, because it shows you know where the letter is going.
Is To Whom It May Concern still acceptable?
It is understood but it works against you. The phrase signals that you did not establish who would read the letter, which is the opposite of the impression a cover letter exists to create. Dear Hiring Manager is shorter and better in every respect.
Should I use Mr, Mrs or Ms in a cover letter?
Use Ms for women in professional correspondence regardless of marital status, and never guess. If the name is ambiguous or you are unsure, use the full name with no honorific — "Dear Alex Whitfield" — which is completely acceptable and avoids the risk entirely.
How do I find the hiring manager's name?
Read the posting again, check who published the vacancy on the job board, search LinkedIn filtered by company and likely job function, and look at the company's team or leadership pages. If ten minutes produces nothing, the name is probably being withheld deliberately.
Do I use a comma or a colon after the greeting?
Both are correct. A comma is standard in most markets and in email; a colon is conventional in formal American business letters. What matters is that there is punctuation and that it is consistent with the rest of the letter.
