How to Address a Cover Letter: Who to Write To + 8 Examples

Address a cover letter to the hiring manager by name (“Dear Ms. Patel,”). If no name is findable, address the role or the team (“Dear Hiring Manager,” or “Dear Marketing Team,”), and put the recipient’s name, title, company and address below the date on a formal letter or PDF. This guide covers the 8 addressing scenarios you will meet in practice, from a named contact to an email application, each with a copy-ready example.

Direct Answer: Who to write to, in order of preference: (1) the contact named in the job posting, (2) the hiring manager you find on the company site or LinkedIn, (3) “Dear Hiring Manager,”, (4) the team or committee, (5) “To Whom It May Concern” only when you cannot even identify the department. Where it goes: your details, date, recipient block, salutation. By email, skip the recipient’s postal address.

What you’ll take away:

• Who to address a cover letter to, with a fallback order for when no name is listed
• The 8 addressing scenarios with a correct US and UK salutation for each
• Where the date, recipient block and your contact details go, with copy-ready headers
• The 4-step method for finding the hiring manager’s name
• What changes when you apply by email or through an online portal

Who Should You Address a Cover Letter To?

Address the cover letter to the person who will read it and decide on the next step. In most companies that is the hiring manager for the role, the person the job reports to. A recruiter or HR contact is the right addressee when the posting names them or when applications go to them.

When you can’t find a name, use this fallback order:

Priority	What you know	Salutation
1	Name of the contact in the posting	Dear Ms. Patel,
2	Name of the hiring manager (your research)	Dear Alex Morgan,
3	Only the role	Dear Hiring Manager,
4	Only the team or department	Dear Marketing Team,
5	Only the company	Dear [Company] Recruiting Team,
6	Nothing at all	To Whom It May Concern:

The Indeed career advice team calls “Dear Hiring Manager” the safest fallback when no name is available, and warns against the impersonal “To Whom It May Concern”. Our guide to “To Whom It May Concern” and better alternatives covers the rare cases where the last row still fits.

How Do You Find the Hiring Manager’s Name?

Four steps find it in most cases:

1. Check the job posting: The contact person is sometimes listed in the description or hidden in the application email address.
2. Visit the company website: “About Us” and team pages reveal department heads.
3. Search LinkedIn: Look for the person who posted the job, or for the head of the team you would join.
4. Call the company: A short, polite call to reception asking who oversees hiring for the position.

Spell the name exactly as the person does, including accents and hyphens. A misspelled name is worse than “Dear Hiring Manager”.

What Are the 8 Addressing Scenarios?

One of these 8 scenarios fits every application you will send:

#	Scenario	US example	UK example
1	Known name	Dear Mr. Morgan: or Dear Alex Morgan,	Dear Mr Morgan,
2	Unknown name	Dear Hiring Manager,	Dear Hiring Manager,
3	Team or department	Dear Marketing Team,	Dear Marketing Team,
4	Committee	Dear Selection Committee,	Dear Selection Committee,
5	Academic or professional title	Dear Dr. Patel,	Dear Professor Singh,
6	Gender unknown	Dear Taylor Kim,	Dear Taylor Kim,
7	Creative industries or startups	Hi Taylor,	Dear Taylor Campbell,
8	Email application	Dear Hiring Manager, (+ clear subject line)	Dear Hiring Manager, (+ clear subject line)

Three notes on punctuation and edge cases:

• Colon or comma (US): a colon after the salutation is the formal US business-letter choice; a comma is common in cover letters. Either is fine, as long as you use one consistently.
• Periods after titles (UK): British English usually writes “Mr”, “Ms” and “Dr” without a period. US English writes “Mr.”, “Ms.”, “Dr.”.
• Gender unknown (scenario 6): the full name works everywhere. “Mx.” is a recognized gender-neutral title, more common in the UK, but use it only if the person uses it.

For creative industries (scenario 7), match the company’s own tone: a startup with a playful careers page can take “Hi Taylor”; a London agency pitching banks cannot. Our dear letter templates and salutations guide has a wider set of openings.

ResuFit builds the header for you. It drafts a cover letter tailored to the job posting, fills your name and details from your profile, and uses the same template design as your resume, so the letterhead matches on both documents. You still check the recipient’s name yourself. Generating and previewing are free; the full PDF download needs Pro or a per-resume purchase. Try the cover letter generator.

Where Does the Address Go on a Cover Letter?

On a formal letter or PDF, the blocks run top to bottom: your contact details, the date, the recipient block, then the salutation. It is the same order as any formal business letter.

U.S. style header:

Jane Carter
San Francisco, CA | 555-123-4567 | janecarter@email.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/janecarter

March 15, 2026

Ms. Priya Patel
Director of Marketing
InnovateTech Solutions
456 Silicon Valley Blvd
San Francisco, CA 94105

Dear Ms. Patel:

UK style header:

James Whitaker
12 Park Lane
London SW1A 1AA
+44 20 7946 0012 | jwhitaker@email.co.uk

4 April 2026

Mr Alistair Davies
Head of Recruitment
Heritage Finance Ltd
78 Threadneedle Street
London EC2R 8HP

Dear Mr Davies,

The key difference: UK headers more often keep the full postal address, while US headers shorten your address to city and state and add professional links.

What Belongs in Your Contact Block?

• Full name (slightly larger font is fine)
• Phone number with area code
• Professional email address
• City and state or region (full address is more common in UK applications)
• LinkedIn profile (common in US applications)
• Portfolio website, if relevant to your industry

Beyond these basics sit choices like font, spacing, and alignment, which our cover letter letterhead design and format guide walks through.

How Do You Format the Date and Recipient Block?

The date follows the region: US: Month Day, Year (March 15, 2026); UK: Day Month Year (4 April 2026). The recipient block lists the name with title, the position, the company and the company address, in that order.

No street address for the employer? Use the company name and city, or stop the block after name, title and company. Don’t invent an address; a short, correct block beats a guessed one.

Do You Need the Employer’s Address on an Emailed or Uploaded Cover Letter?

Scenario 8 has its own rules, and many applications now go through email or an online portal instead of the post:

• Email body: no recipient postal block. Start with the salutation; your contact details go in the signature.
• Subject line: clear and specific, for example “Application: Marketing Coordinator Role - Jane Carter”.
• PDF attachment: keep the full header, including the recipient block if you know the address.
• Online portals: some applicant tracking systems read plain text more reliably than headers built from text boxes or images, so keep the header as plain text.

Our guide to job application emails covers the email-specific parts in depth.

How Do You Handle International Applications?

Follow the conventions of the employer’s country, and check where the company is headquartered: offices often inherit conventions from headquarters. A British bank with a New York office may prefer UK conventions; a US tech startup in London often follows American norms. For UK employers specifically, our guide to UK cover letter templates covers format and examples in more depth.

After the Address: The First Paragraph

The address block earns you a read; the first paragraph has to keep it. Name the role, lead with your strongest credential, and skip warm-up phrases. Our simple cover letter sample shows the structure, and these AI prompts for cover letters help when you are staring at a blank page.

Find the name if you can, fall back to the role or team if you can’t, and match the header to the country. That covers all 8 scenarios. When you’re ready, ResuFit writes a cover letter for the specific job and puts it under the same letterhead as your resume.