How to Find the Hiring Manager for a Job Posting: Who to Write To

Who makes the hiring decision, by company size?

In a company under 50 people, the owner decides, and is often the hiring manager as well. There is no HR department and no preferred vendor list: the owner opens their own inbox, and the owner pays your fee. Companies like this are the bulk of the market by number. The SBA Office of Advocacy counts 36.2 million small businesses, employing about 46% of U.S. private-sector workers (the SBA counts every firm under 500 employees, and most of them have no employees at all, so read it as the scale of the long tail rather than a count of 50-person companies).

In a company of a few hundred people, the department head decides for most roles and the owner or president for senior ones. An HR manager, where one exists, frames the process and holds the budget. In a large employer, the hiring manager voices the need, but the decision to use an outside firm often runs through talent acquisition, procurement or vendor management, which own the preferred vendor list or a managed service provider (MSP) arrangement.

An opinion: writing to the head of HR at a large employer does not work for an independent recruiter. They hear from agencies all year, they have their vendors, and they have no particular seat on their mind. The hiring manager who has spent six weeks looking for a project engineer has a specific problem, and you show up with an answer. If that manager sends you to the vendor process, you enter it with an introduction.

The more senior the role, the closer the top of the company gets. For a CFO or a plant manager, the CEO is often the real decision-maker, even if someone else runs the search.

Should you write to the hiring manager or to HR?

To the hiring manager, and our data agrees. In-house recruiters refuse more often on principle: "we recruit in-house." Our reading: recruiting is their job, and an outside firm looks like a rival to their department. Operating managers and owners react differently. They more often say "this isn't my area," which means we reached the wrong person, but that refusal does not close the door: it often points to the right one. These are trends measured over a few months, which we remeasure every night, on French contacts.

A refusal reads differently depending on who sends it. "We recruit in-house" from an HR recruiter mostly describes how their department works. The same words from the hiring manager mean that this person does not see a use for an outside firm. Only the second deserves to be taken at face value, and you can then ask when they would call one.

HR is the right door in two cases: the manager sends you there, or the company centralizes hiring and says so. Even then, name the manager in your message to HR.

What do you say to "this isn't my area"?

Thank them, and ask the one question that matters: who would you suggest I write to? Someone who answers "not me" has read your message, which is not that common. One line is enough.

Thanks for the reply. Who would you suggest I write to about this controller role? I am happy to mention your name if that works for you.

Do not ask them to forward your message: forwarding costs effort to someone who owes you nothing, while giving a name costs ten seconds.

Odyn

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Every day, Odyn spots the companies hiring in your specialty, writes to decision-makers from your own email and LinkedIn account, follows up, and hands the conversation back to you the moment they reply.

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How do you find their name?

Five places, from the most reliable to the slowest.

1. The posting. It names the department, sometimes the reporting line ("reports to the VP of Operations"), sometimes the person who posted it.
2. LinkedIn. Some postings show a "Meet the hiring team" section. LinkedIn explains that members choose to appear there, so the person listed may be the manager or the in-house recruiter who posted the job. Check the title before you conclude.
3. The exact title. In a company of a hundred people there is one VP of Engineering and one plant manager. Search that title on LinkedIn along with the company name.
4. The company website. Team page, press releases, leadership page.
5. State business records, for a small company: Secretary of State filings often show the owner or registered officers.

To know whom to look for before opening LinkedIn, start from the role. A software engineer reports to a VP of Engineering or CTO, a sales rep to a VP of Sales, an accountant to the controller or CFO, a project manager in construction to a director of operations or the owner, a nurse to a director of nursing.

One person per hire. Writing to three executives at the same company about the same role gets you noticed, and they talk to each other.

How do you find a work email?

Start with the company's format: first.last@, flast@ or first@, deduced from any public address at the same domain, such as a press release or a sales contact. A deduced format is still a guess. One bounced message is no drama; several in a row damage the reputation of your sending address, and your real messages start landing in spam.

Verify before sending. An address verifier checks that the domain accepts mail and that the mailbox exists, without writing to it. It tells you nothing about servers that accept every address: if your tool says so, start with LinkedIn. Avoid generic addresses (info@, sales@), which land in a shared inbox and never on the manager's desk, and personal addresses.

When the address stays unknown or doubtful, a LinkedIn invitation takes over; automating LinkedIn prospecting has its own pacing rules. For the first message, see the guide to a business development email for recruiters.

Commercial email to businesses in the U.S. falls under CAN-SPAM, which makes no exception for B2B: accurate sender information, a valid postal address, and an opt-out that works, honored within 10 business days, according to the FTC's CAN-SPAM rules for businesses. Contacts in the UK or the EU come under other rules (GDPR, and PECR in the UK): check them before you write.

How Odyn picks the person to write to

For each posting it keeps, Odyn looks for the person who decides on that hire and their business contact details, then drafts a message from the ad. The message goes out from the recruiter's own email address and LinkedIn account, and Odyn stops as soon as the person replies: the recruiter then takes over the conversation. For the first three business days, the recruiter reviews every message before it is sent, which lets them correct a choice of recipient. Odyn does not run the conversation that follows or the scoping call. For which postings to keep, see the guide to prospecting companies that are hiring, and for the bigger picture, the general guide to getting clients for a recruitment agency.

Frequently asked questions