Twelve emails to a hiring manager, one per situation. Each one is a real shape you can copy — the names and numbers are invented, and yours have to replace them or the whole thing collapses.
Read this if: you want to see finished examples and pick the closest one.
Read instead: the line-by-line rules behind them, whether to send one at all, and when, the message box inside the application form, and every situation in one table.
1. After applying through the portal
Use when: you submitted the application in the last few days and found the manager's address. This is the default case.
Subject: Application for Senior Backend Engineer - Maria Kovacs
Hi Daniel,
I applied for the Senior Backend Engineer role on Tuesday.
At Zalando I took p99 latency on the checkout service from 1.4s to
310ms across two quarters. Your posting puts checkout reliability
first, which is why I am writing rather than waiting.
Anything you want to see beyond the CV?
MariaWhy it works: the manager can search the ATS for her, the number is checkable, and the question takes four seconds to answer.
2. Before applying, with one question
Use when: something in the posting is ambiguous and the answer changes whether you apply.
Subject: Staff Data Engineer role - one question before I apply
Hi Ruth,
I am about to apply for the Staff Data Engineer role and wanted to
check one thing: is this position rebuilding the warehouse, or
maintaining what is already there? I have done both and would write
the application differently.
For context, I ran the Snowflake migration at Monzo - 300-odd
pipelines, eleven months.
Either answer is fine, just want to aim it right.
TomasWhy it works: the question is real, it flatters nobody, and it puts a credential in front of the manager before the ATS ever sees him.
3. First job, no experience
Use when: you are a graduate or switching into your first role in the field.
Subject: Junior Analyst application - Ellie Byrne
Hi Sam,
I applied for the Junior Analyst role yesterday.
I do not have commercial experience yet. What I do have: I spent
last summer building the booking dashboard my university's sports
centre still runs on - eight sites, about 4,000 bookings a month,
and they stopped keeping the paper log.
Small thing, but it was mine end to end.
Would a short task be easier for you than reading a CV?
EllieWhy it works: she names the gap in her second line instead of hiding it, then puts something real next to it. The task offer removes the risk of saying yes.
4. Career changer
Use when: your last job title has nothing to do with this one.
Subject: Junior UX Designer application - Ben Aliyev
Hi Sofia,
I applied for the Junior UX Designer role on Thursday.
I taught secondary maths for six years. Last year I redesigned the
parent portal our school ran on - 900 families, and support tickets
about it dropped by roughly two thirds after we shipped. That project
is why I changed direction, and it is the one in my portfolio.
I am junior at this and know it. Happy to do a task if that beats
reading a portfolio.
BenWhy it works: no mention of transferable skills. One project, one number, one honest sentence about where he stands.
5. Internship
Use when: you are applying for an internship or placement, and the manager is usually a team lead rather than a recruiter.
Subject: Summer product internship - applied Monday
Hi Jonas,
I applied for the summer product internship on Monday.
I run a small newsletter about European rail pricing - 2,100
subscribers, entirely from a scraper I wrote to track fare changes.
It is the closest thing I have to product work, and the reason I
noticed your pricing team is hiring.
Is the internship still open?
NadiaWhy it works: a side project stated concretely beats a list of coursework, and the status question is the easiest possible reply.
6. Someone referred you
Use when: a person inside the company suggested you write. Say their name in the first line.
Subject: Referred by Katrin Weiss - Solutions Engineer role
Hi Marc,
Katrin Weiss suggested I write to you about the Solutions Engineer
opening - we worked together at Contentful for two years.
I spent the last three years doing pre-sales for API products,
mostly with German mid-market. Closed 14 technical evaluations last
year and lost 3, and I can tell you exactly why on the three.
Applied through the portal this morning. Worth a conversation?
LukasWhy it works: the referral is in the subject line where it does the most good, and volunteering the losses makes the wins believable.
7. Following up after silence
Use when: five to seven days have passed since your first email and nothing came back. Send this once.
Subject: Re: Application for Senior Backend Engineer - Maria Kovacs
Hi Daniel,
Following up on the note below in case it got buried.
One thing I did not mention: the checkout work I described was
during a migration off a monolith, which your posting also mentions.
Happy to walk through how we sequenced it.
If the role has moved on, no problem - just let me know and I will
stop.
MariaWhy it works: it adds information rather than repeating, and it gives the manager a graceful way to close the loop. Full timing in the no-response playbook.
8. After a rejection, for a different role
Use when: they turned you down, and a role you fit better has opened.
Subject: Applied for Platform Engineer - we spoke in March
Hi Priya,
You interviewed me for the SRE role in March and went with someone
stronger on Kubernetes. Fair call.
The Platform Engineer opening looks closer to what I actually do -
I have spent the six months since then owning the Terraform estate
at Bolt, about 200 modules across four accounts.
Applied this morning. Same candidate, better fit.
AndreiWhy it works: he names the rejection without arguing with it. Managers remember candidates who took a no well.
9. Small company, write to the founder
Use when: under about fifty people and there is no hiring manager separate from the person who runs the place.
Subject: Your first marketing hire - applied Friday
Hi Elena,
I applied for the marketing role on Friday.
You are hiring your first marketer, which usually means the job is
whatever is broken that month. I did that at Pleo when we were 30
people - owned content, then paid, then the website rebuild, in
that order because that was the order it mattered.
Happy to send the three things I would look at in your first month.
Say the word.
KarimWhy it works: he describes the job accurately before describing himself, which founders notice. The offer is concrete and free.
10. Internal transfer
Use when: you already work at the company and the role is on another team.
Subject: Applied for the Analytics Engineer role on your team
Hi Wei,
I applied for the Analytics Engineer role this morning - I am
currently in Support Ops, two floors down.
I built the ticket-volume forecasting model our workforce planning
runs on. It started as a spreadsheet I was embarrassed by and is now
a dbt model your team reviews, which is roughly the transition I am
trying to make with my job title.
Do you want the internal referral through the system, or is applying
enough?
GraceWhy it works: the connection to his team is already real, and the process question is one only an internal candidate would ask.
11. Returning after a career break
Use when: there is a visible gap and you would rather explain it than let the ATS decide what it means.
Subject: Application for Finance Manager - Ines Almeida
Hi Robert,
I applied for the Finance Manager role yesterday.
I took two years out for family care and came back in January. Before
that I ran month-end close for a 400-person business at Farfetch, and
I have spent this year contracting to knock the rust off - three
close cycles at a smaller firm.
The gap is real and I would rather say it here than have it read as
something else.
Happy to talk whenever suits.
InesWhy it works: the gap gets one sentence and no apology, framed between what she did before and what she has done since.
12. The role went quiet or was reposted
Use when: the posting has been up for months, or disappeared and came back.
Subject: Is the Content Lead role still live?
Hi Anja,
The Content Lead posting went up in May and reappeared last week, so
I am not sure whether it is a real search or a placeholder. Worth
asking before I spend an evening on the application.
If it is live: I ran content at a B2B fintech for four years and grew
organic from 3k to 71k sessions a month, mostly on comparison pages.
If it is not, no problem at all.
DarioWhy it works: ghost postings are common enough that the question is reasonable, and asking it politely often gets an honest answer.
What to change in all twelve
Every one of these fails if you send it as written. Four things have to become yours before it goes out.
- The name. A real first name in the greeting. If you cannot find one, see the verdict on every common greeting — an invented name is worse than none.
- The evidence. Your result, specific enough to be checked. This is the only sentence that is genuinely hard to write, and it is the one that earns the reply.
- The company detail. Something from their posting or product that could not appear in an email to anyone else.
- The register. Read it out loud. If a sentence is not one you would say, rewrite it in words you would.
Getting the name and address in the first place
None of this matters without a real person to send it to. Paste the job posting URL and you get the hiring manager for that specific role — name, verified email, LinkedIn — plus a first draft written from the posting and your own profile.
Works with LinkedIn, Indeed, Greenhouse, Lever, and company career pages.
Doing it by hand instead: how to find a hiring manager's email.
FAQ
Can I send one of these exactly as written?
No. Every reply-worthy line in these examples is a specific fact about a specific person, and the samples are built to show you where your facts go. A sample sent unedited reads as a template, and a template reads as a mass send.
What is a good length for a sample email to a hiring manager?
Every example here sits between 60 and 110 words in the body. That is four to six sentences and fits a phone screen, which is where most of these get read.
Should the subject line say "application"?
Name the role — that is the part that matters. Whether the word "application" appears is a coin flip. Managers with three open requisitions need to know which one you mean before they open anything.
What if I do not have a number to put in the evidence line?
Use a thing that exists instead: something you built, a scale you handled, a decision you made and what followed. Checkable beats impressive.
Do these work for recruiters too?
With one change. A recruiter screens against a requirements list, so lead with the requirement you clearly meet rather than the problem you have solved. Which person you are actually writing to is covered in hiring manager vs recruiter.
How many of these should I send?
One per role you genuinely want, and only after applying. Ten targeted emails will out-perform a hundred portal submissions, and sending the same note to forty companies is a different activity with worse odds and different rules.