You are halfway through an application and the form asks for a message to the hiring manager. There is no word count, no example, and no sign that anyone will read it. Most people either skip it or paste their cover letter. Both are wrong, and for the same reason: this is not a cover letter box, and it is not decoration either.
Who actually reads this field
The text is saved to your application record. Whoever opens your profile in the applicant tracking system sees it — in practice the recruiter first, the hiring manager only if you clear screening. That is the entire mechanism.
What it is not: a message. Nothing is emailed. No notification fires. Nobody is told you wrote anything. The field is a text column on your application row, and it is named misleadingly on almost every platform that has one.
So its job is narrow and worth taking seriously: give the person scanning your resume one reason to keep reading it.
Where you run into it
| System | What the field is usually called | How it behaves |
|---|---|---|
| Workday | Additional information, or a custom question | Configured per employer. Undocumented length limits, no autosave |
| Greenhouse | Cover letter, with a paste-text option | Sometimes required, sometimes optional. Accepts pasted text instead of a file |
| Lever | Additional information | Free text, usually optional |
| SmartRecruiters | Message or cover letter block | Configured per employer, varies widely between postings |
The wording changes, the function does not. Every one of these is the same thing: free text attached to your application, read on a screen, never delivered.
How long it should be
Nobody publishes the limits. They are set per employer when the form is configured, which is why you will find no reliable table of character counts anywhere — including this page. What is documented is worse: Workday text fields have unannounced limits and no autosave, and long answers can be truncated or lost outright if the tab sleeps or the session expires.
Two rules follow from that:
- Draft outside the form. Write it in a notes app, then paste. Never compose directly in the box.
- Aim for 900 to 1,200 characters — roughly 150 to 200 words. That fits comfortably inside every field we have encountered and still reads as deliberate.
If a counter appears and it is shorter than your draft, cut the context sentence first. Keep the evidence.
The four-sentence structure
- The role, named exactly. Postings get reused and reopened; be unambiguous about which one you mean.
- One concrete, checkable result tied to something the posting actually asks for. Not a summary of your career — one fact with a number in it.
- One line on why this team. Something that could not be copied into another application unchanged.
- A low-friction close. You are not asking for a call. You are signalling that you are reachable.
That is the whole format. The discipline is in what you leave out, not in what you add.
If you know the hiring manager's name
Address it plainly and move on — one line, then straight into the substance. If you are unsure which greeting fits the situation, our cover letter salutation guide gives a verdict on each one.
If you do not know the name
Write the message with no salutation at all. The field sits inside your application record, so it does not need a greeting the way a letter does — and an invented or wrong name is worse than none. Start at sentence one.
Five examples you can adapt
Replace every bracket. A message that still contains a bracket is worse than an empty field.
Software engineer. Applying for the [Backend Engineer] role. I spent the last two years on [payments infrastructure at a company processing X transactions a month], and the reliability work in your posting is the part of the job I would want anyway. Happy to walk through the migration I led if it is useful.
Sales. Applying for the [Account Executive] role. I closed [$X] in new business last year in [the same segment you sell into], mostly through outbound. Your posting mentions building the motion rather than inheriting it, which is the part I am after.
Product manager. Applying for the [Product Manager] role. I shipped [feature] to [X] users at [company] and owned the discovery work behind it. The posting describes a team without a dedicated researcher, which matches how I have been working.
Data and analytics. Applying for the [Data Analyst] role. I built the reporting layer at [company] that [specific outcome], and the stack in your posting is the one I use daily. I can share the dashboard structure if it helps.
Career changer. Applying for the [role]. I am moving from [field] into [field], and the overlap is concrete: [specific transferable work with a result]. I know that is not the usual path for this posting, so I wanted to say it directly rather than leave you to infer it.
What not to write
- Your resume in prose. The reader already has it open.
- “I am passionate about…” Unfalsifiable, and every other applicant wrote it.
- A request for a call. High friction at the wrong moment.
- Anything about salary or start dates unless the field explicitly asks.
- Text with brackets left in. It reads as a mass application, because it is one.
Message field vs cover letter vs a direct email
These get confused constantly, and the difference is mechanical rather than stylistic:
- The message field is seen by whoever opens your record. Passive, no notification.
- The cover letter is the same audience, longer, and usually skimmed rather than read.
- A direct email is the only one of the three that creates a new touchpoint — it arrives in an inbox that is not ranked by a filter.
Filling in the field well does not replace the email. It makes the email make sense when it arrives.
The one channel with data behind it
On LinkedIn there is a genuinely different feature with a confusingly similar name: Contact the job poster, which appears on a posting when whoever posted it chose to show their profile. That one does send a real message. According to LinkedIn, applicants who messaged the job poster were 1.6× more likely to hear back and 3× more likely to be hired. Premium Career includes a small monthly allowance of InMails for this.
That is a separate channel with separate rules — see how to message a hiring manager on LinkedIn for what to actually send there. Do not confuse it with the form field: one is a message, the other is a database column.
After you submit
The field is the last thing you control inside the portal. Everything that raises your odds after that happens outside it. Find the hiring manager's email and send a short note within 24 to 48 hours — the same four sentences, adapted for an inbox.
Works with LinkedIn, Indeed, Greenhouse, Lever, and company career pages.
Templates and timing for that email are in our guide to contacting a hiring manager after applying. If you do not have an address yet, start with how to find a hiring manager's email.