How to Address a Cover Letter (With the Right Greeting)

A mid-career professional addressing a cover letter, the reframe that the greeting is a routing decision rather than a formality, why the greeting carries more weight than it should, the four-line address block, how to address the letter in five situations, the greeting line itself, a worked example, and the four mistakes

How to address a cover letter is the first thing a reader sees and the fastest way to look careless, and most people solve it by guessing. They write "Dear Hiring Manager" when they know the name, or they write "To Whom It May Concern" and hope. The greeting is not a formality. It is a routing decision, and it tells the reader whether you did ten minutes of homework.

Here is the reframe: The address block and the greeting have one job - to get your letter to the right desk and to prove you know which desk that is. You are not being polite. You are showing that you understand who owns the problem you are applying to solve.

What follows is the whole method: why the greeting carries more weight than it should, the four-line address block, how to address the letter in five common situations, the greeting line itself, a worked example, and the four mistakes.

Why the greeting carries more weight than it should

A cover letter is read in a few seconds before it is read properly, and the address block is the part that gets read first. That is why a wrong greeting costs more than a weak paragraph.

It is the only part you can get objectively right. A reader cannot argue with a correct name and title. They can argue with your framing, so the greeting is where they form the first judgement.
It shows whether you targeted the role. A letter addressed to the actual person reads as a letter written for this job. A letter addressed to nobody reads as a letter written for any job.
It decides who opens it. If the letter is forwarded, the greeting tells the next reader whether it was meant for them or for someone else.
It is cheap to fix. Ten minutes on the posting, the company page and a search for the team is the whole cost.

The letter this sits inside is the value-first cover letter formula, and the fill-in-the-blank version is the cover letter value proposition templates.

The address block: four lines, in this order

The block sits at the top of the letter, above the greeting. Four lines, no more.

Line one: the reader's name. First and last name, spelled the way the company spells it. If you only have a first name, use the first name.
Line two: their title. Copy it from the posting or the team page. If the posting names a hiring manager, that title is the one to use.
Line three: the company. The legal or trading name that appears on their site, not the nickname people use internally.
Line four: the city and state, or nothing. A city and state is enough. A full street address is not required and looks dated.

If you cannot fill in lines one and two, do not invent them. Skip the block and go straight to the greeting - a clean letter with one line missing reads better than a letter with a guessed name in it.

How to address it in five situations

The situation decides the greeting. These are the five you will actually meet.

Situation	What to write	Why
You know the name	Dear Dana Whitfield,	The only greeting that proves you looked
You know the title, not the name	Dear Hiring Manager,	Correct and neutral; never guess a name
You know neither	Dear [Company] Hiring Team,	Names the employer, so it still reads targeted
Two people are named	Dear Dana and Marcus,	Both are addressed; neither is ranked
Internal transfer	Dear Dana,	You already know them; formality reads as distance

The greeting line itself

Four rules cover almost every letter you will write.

Use a comma, not a colon. A colon reads as a form letter and belongs in a memo, not a letter to a person.
Use the full name when you have it, the first name when you do not. "Dear Dana Whitfield," is safe. "Dear Dana," is right when the company is small or you have already spoken.
Never use "To Whom It May Concern" or "Dear Sir or Madam". Both say you did not look, and both are the fastest way to date the letter.
Do not open with "My name is". Your name is in the signature. The first sentence should carry the argument, not the introduction.

A worked example: Dana stops guessing

Dana applied to eleven roles over two months and heard nothing. Her letters all opened the same way: "To Whom It May Concern", followed by a paragraph about her interest in the company. She changed one thing. For each role she spent ten minutes on the posting and the team page, and where a name was listed she used it. Where it was not, she used "Dear [Company] Hiring Team,". She also moved her strongest sentence to the top, so the greeting was followed immediately by the problem the role existed to solve rather than by an introduction. The letters were otherwise identical to the ones she had already sent. Three of the next six got a reply, and one interviewer opened by saying he had forwarded her letter to the hiring manager because it was addressed to the team by name. Nothing about her experience had changed. The address block had done the work of getting the letter to the right desk.

The four mistakes

Cover letter greetings go wrong in four predictable ways, and each one is a step you can add back.

Mistake	What it looks like	The fix
Guessing a name	A wrong first name in the greeting	Use the title or the hiring team instead of a guess
Defaulting to nobody	"To Whom It May Concern" on every letter	Name the company's hiring team at minimum
A five-line block	Street address, phone, email, date	Four lines: name, title, company, city
Greeting the wrong desk	Addressed to a recruiter who does not own the role	Address the person who owns the problem, not the inbox

The address-block checklist

Four lines, one greeting, no guessing.

I have looked for the hiring manager's name?
I have the reader's title from the posting or team page?
I have the company's trading name, not its nickname?
The block is four lines or fewer?
I have not included a street address or a date?
The greeting uses a comma, not a colon?
I have not used 'To Whom It May Concern'?
I have not used 'Dear Sir or Madam'?
I have not opened the letter with 'My name is'?
Two named readers are both addressed?
The first sentence after the greeting carries the argument?
I have not guessed a name I could not verify?

The address block, line by line

Four lines, in this order, above the greeting.

Line	What goes in it	If you do not have it
1. Name	First and last name, spelled as the company spells it	Skip the line; do not guess
2. Title	Copied from the posting or the team page	Use 'Hiring Manager'
3. Company	The trading name on their site	Use the name in the posting
4. City and state	City and state only	Leave the line out

The close

Addressing a cover letter is a ten-minute job that changes how the rest of the letter is read. Find the name, or name the team, and get the letter to the desk that owns the role. If you are still deciding what the letter should argue once it arrives, the value-first formula is the place to start, and if the letter is running long, how long a cover letter should be settles that in one page.

Quick answers

Short answers to the questions this piece gets asked most.

How do I address a cover letter?
Four lines at the top: the reader's name, their title, the company, and the city and state. Then a greeting. If you know the name, use it. If you only know the title, write "Dear Hiring Manager,". If you know neither, write "Dear [Company] Hiring Team,".

What if I do not know the hiring manager's name?
Use the title instead. "Dear Hiring Manager," is correct and neutral, and it never risks a wrong name. If the posting names a team, "Dear [Company] Hiring Team," reads more targeted than a generic greeting and costs you nothing.

Is "To Whom It May Concern" still acceptable?
No. It says you did not look, and it dates the letter. Any of the three fallbacks - the name, the title, or the company hiring team - reads better and takes ten minutes to find.

Should I use "Dear" or "Hi" in a cover letter?
Use "Dear" unless the company is small, informal, or you have already spoken to the person. "Dear" is never wrong. "Hi" is right in a startup or after a real conversation, and it reads as a mismatch in a formal process.

LaunchPath Careers tool: want to build this with structure instead of guesswork? LaunchPath Careers has a Resume Value Proposition Worksheet and a Resume & Applications Roadmap. Start at LaunchPathCareers.com.

Read next:You Sent 50 Applications and Got Silence. Here's Why — What actually happens to your application after you hit submit.How to Rewrite Your Resume Around Your Value Proposition — The three-claim rewrite that makes a resume read like a pitch, not a duty list.The Experience Paradox Is a Lie. Here's How to Break In — How to break in without years of experience, and what entry level really means.

LaunchPath Careers by UFO Chaser® helps job seekers build a strategy-first job search. Learn more at LaunchPathCareers.com.

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