The salutation is the first line of the letter, and most candidates spend three seconds on it. That is fine — but the choice between three default formulas does signal something to the reader, and one of them dates the candidate before the first paragraph even begins.

This is a short post on purpose. The decision tree is small.

The default order of preference

In 2026, recruiters and hiring managers expect this hierarchy:

1. A specific name, written correctly. Dear Maria Schmidt, or Dear Ms. Schmidt, — both fine, the first slightly warmer.
2. Dear Hiring Manager, if no name is findable after a reasonable search. Universally accepted, not seen as lazy.
3. Dear [Team Name] Team, if you know which team is hiring. Dear Engineering Team,, Dear Recruiting Team, — works well at companies where teams hire collectively.

The ones to avoid:

• Dear Sir/Madam — dated and gendered. Most readers under 50 register it as a tell that the candidate hasn't written a cover letter in 10 years.
• To Whom It May Concern — formally correct, emotionally distant. Acceptable for a formal compliance role, off-tone for almost everything else.
• Hi! or Hey there — too casual unless you have actually spoken to the person.
• Dear [Company Name] — a company is not a person. Dear Google, reads as a mail merge.

How to find the hiring manager's name in under 10 minutes

Most candidates either skip this step or spend an hour scrolling LinkedIn. Neither is right. A focused 10 minutes catches the name maybe 40% of the time, and that is enough to be worth doing.

1. Check the job posting itself. A surprising number of postings include the hiring manager's name in the description, the contact section, or the recruiter byline. Read it twice.
2. Search LinkedIn for the title. Engineering Manager at Acme Co filtered to current employees usually surfaces 1–3 candidates. If only one matches, that is your person. If three match, take a best guess based on the team the role sits in.
3. Look at the company's About or Team page. Smaller companies (under 200 people) almost always list department heads.
4. Check the recruiter who posted. If the posting was on LinkedIn, the recruiter's name is usually visible. Addressing the letter to the recruiter is acceptable when you cannot find the manager.
5. Email the company. A short email to careers@company.com asking who the hiring manager for [Role] is gets a response maybe a quarter of the time. The downside is small — even no response leaves you no worse off than before.

If none of this turns up a name in 10 minutes, stop. Dear Hiring Manager is fine. You have spent enough time on the salutation; the body of the letter is where the work actually pays off.

Dear Hiring Manager alternatives — when to use which

There is a small set of acceptable variants for the no-name case, and they pattern by company type:

• Dear Hiring Manager, — safe default, fits any company.
• Dear Hiring Team, — slightly warmer, fits startups and tech companies where hiring is collaborative.
• Dear [Department] Team, — when the job posting names a specific team. Dear Product Design Team,. Shows you read the posting.
• Dear Recruiter, — when you know the recruiter and not the manager. Direct and honest.

Pick one. Do not stack them (Dear Hiring Manager and Team). Do not invent a creative one (Greetings, future colleagues!). The salutation should disappear into the background and let the first paragraph do the lifting.

A name you cannot pronounce — what to do

If you find a name like Aoife Ní Bhriain or Wojciech Szczepański and you are not sure on pronunciation, that is not a salutation problem — that is an interview-call problem. For the letter itself, the spelled name is what matters. Get the spelling exactly right, including any accents or diacritics. Copy-paste from LinkedIn rather than retyping. A misspelled name is a worse signal than a generic Dear Hiring Manager,.

What follows the salutation matters more

The salutation is a 30-second decision, and the opening sentence is a 30-minute one. A perfect Dear Maria Schmidt, followed by I am writing to express my interest in the [Role] position at your company wastes the salutation effort entirely. The reader has already started skimming.

The Postulit team sees this pattern every day in cover letters generated from LinkedIn profiles — the salutation gets attention and then the first paragraph collapses into corporate filler. Spend the same energy on the opening line as you do on finding the name, and the rest of the letter has a fighting chance.

One name, found in 10 minutes, beats 90 minutes of LinkedIn scrolling that ends in a generic salutation anyway. Set a timer.

Salutation done. Move on.