Is “Dear Hiring Manager” okay on a cover letter?
Yes. It is the standard greeting when the posting does not name anyone. It is gender-neutral, it points at the person who decides, and it reads as current, which “Dear Sir or Madam” and “To Whom It May Concern” no longer do.
Its weakness is that every other applicant used it too. The greeting cannot hurt you, but it also tells the reader nothing. If ten minutes of looking turns up a name, use the name.
Comma or colon after “Dear Hiring Manager”?
Either is correct. A comma (“Dear Hiring Manager,”) is what most people write and what fits an email. A colon (“Dear Hiring Manager:”) is the formal U.S. business-letter form and suits law, government and finance applications. Pick one and move on.
- Capitalize all three words in the greeting. In the body of the letter, “hiring manager” goes back to lowercase.
- No exclamation mark, and no “Dear Hiring Manager of Acme Corp”. The company name belongs in the first sentence.
- Check the spelling. “Dear Hiring Manger” passes spellcheck, because “manger” is a word.
“Dear Hiring Manager” and the alternatives, side by side
| Greeting | Use it when | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Dear Priya, | You know who runs the team. Normal in tech, startups, agencies. | A wrong name is worse than no name. Confirm it twice. |
| Dear Ms. Raman, / Dear Priya Raman, | Formal industries. Use the full name when you are unsure of the title. | Guessing Mr. or Ms. from a first name. |
| Dear Hiring Manager, | No name on the posting and none found after a real search. | Using it when the name was one click away on LinkedIn. |
| Dear Data Platform Team, | The posting names the team but not its lead. | Inventing a team name the company does not use. |
| Dear Recruiter, | A recruiter posted the role or wrote to you first. | Sending your best pitch to someone who only screens. |
| Dear Human Resources, | The posting says to send applications to HR. | HR files the letter. It rarely picks the hire. |
| Dear Sir or Madam, | Almost never in U.S. hiring. | Reads as dated and assumes gender. |
The other greetings people search for, from “Dear Hiring Team” to “Attn: Hiring Manager”, each get a verdict in the full table of cover letter salutations.
Where the hiring manager's name usually is
Whether a name exists on the page depends on where the job is posted. Between May 24, 2026 and August 24, 2026, people ran 2,086 job postings through our lookup. 862 were LinkedIn postings, 615 were company careers pages, and 386 sat on an applicant tracking system such as Workday, Greenhouse or Ashby (full breakdown).
- LinkedIn postings sometimes show a “Meet the hiring team” block or the person who posted the job. Check whether that person is a recruiter or the team lead before you address them.
- Company careers pages rarely name anyone, but the team page next door often does. Look for the head of the function in the job title.
- ATS pages are built to hide the people behind the form. Read the description for a “reports to” line, then search LinkedIn for that title at the company.
The step-by-step version, including how to confirm an address, is in how to find a hiring manager's email.
Need the actual name instead of a generic salutation? Paste the job URL into DearHiringManager.io — find the hiring manager's name in about a minute, then open with “Dear [Name],” instead.
Does the name change anything?
Nobody has measured the greeting on its own, and anyone quoting a percentage for it is guessing. What we can show is who people write to when direct contact goes somewhere. We read and coded 79 public first-person accounts of job seekers who contacted someone at the company. 70 of them wrote to the hiring manager and 5 to a recruiter. In 43 of the 79 accounts the author describes reaching an interview or further.
These are stories people chose to post, so the counts are not a success rate. They do show the pattern: the letters that led somewhere were addressed to a person. The sources and the coding are in the hiring manager outreach study.
Example: the same opening with and without a name
Dear Hiring Manager,
I'm applying for the Senior Analyst role on your pricing team. At
Northwind I rebuilt the discount model for 40 regional stores, which
cut margin leakage by 3 points in two quarters.Dear Priya,
I'm applying for the Senior Analyst role on your team. Your talk on
regional pricing at Retail Summit is the reason I looked the role up.
At Northwind I rebuilt the discount model for 40 regional stores.The second version works because the name comes with a sentence only that reader could receive. A name pasted on top of a generic letter gains little.
Can you write “Dear Hiring Manager” in an email?
You can, and it is fine for an application sent to a jobs@ inbox. For a message sent to one person's address it looks odd: you found their email, so you know their name. Open with “Hi Priya,” or “Dear Priya,” and keep the note short. The rest of that email is covered in how to write an email to a hiring manager.
FAQ
Is “Dear Hiring Manager” okay for a cover letter?
Yes. It is the accepted default when no name is available. A named greeting is stronger, so spend a few minutes looking before you settle for it.
Is it “Dear Hiring Manager,” or “Dear Hiring Manager:”?
Both are correct. Use a comma for most applications and all emails, and a colon for formal business letters in fields like law or government.
What is a good alternative to “Dear Hiring Manager”?
The person's name. If you cannot find it, “Dear [Team Name] Team,” works when the posting names the team. Avoid “To Whom It May Concern”.
Should “Hiring Manager” be capitalized?
In the greeting, yes: “Dear Hiring Manager,”. In a sentence it is lowercase: “I would welcome a call with the hiring manager.”
Can I use “Dear Hiring Manager” in an email?
For a shared inbox, yes. If you are writing to one person's address, use their name.