How to start a cover letter: the greeting and 5 opening lines that fit the posting
How to start a cover letter: who to address when the posting names no one, what the UK and US conventions really say, and 5 opening lines built from the job ad, with examples.
The first two lines of a cover letter are the greeting and the opening sentence. Most guides tell you to find the hiring manager's name on LinkedIn and to avoid "I am writing to apply for". Both are true, and both skip the one document that already answers most of the question: the job posting.
We read 347 postings to see what they actually tell a candidate about who will read the letter. Then we built the greeting and five opening lines from what a posting says, so you can start a letter in ten minutes without a cliche. If you want the whole letter, parts, format and a full example, read how to write a cover letter first and come back here for the top.
Who you are writing to: the posting usually says
On 3 October 2026 we pulled up to eight random postings from each of 44 public Greenhouse job boards (Airbnb, Stripe, Figma, Datadog, Cloudflare, the ACLU, Wikimedia and others), 347 postings in all, and searched the text for a reporting line: "reports to", "reporting to", "reporting directly to".
17%
14% name the manager's title
of 347 postings say who the role reports to. Director (20 postings), Manager (17) and Head (9) are the titles named most often. Only 2 of the 347 mention a cover letter at all.
Source: HiredFolio count of 44 public Greenhouse job boards, 3 October 2026
Fifty postings handed us a title to write to: "Head of Ads Policy", "Director of Data Engineering", "Senior Manager of Application Security", "Engineering Manager of Safety Experience", "General Counsel". None of the eight ranking guides we read mentions looking there. They send you to LinkedIn to guess a name, when the posting gave you the function.
Two things follow for the greeting:
- If the posting names a title, use it. "Dear Director of Data Engineering," is specific, correct and gender-free. It also tells the reader you read past the bullet list. "Dear Head of Ads Policy and team," works when you expect a recruiter to screen first.
- If it names a title, use it in the first sentence too. The reporting line is a brief: the role exists to take work off that person's desk. An opening that says what you would take off it beats one that says you are excited.
Twenty-five of the 44 boards had at least one posting with a reporting line, so this is not a quirk of one employer. It is also not a majority: 83% of postings said nothing, which is why the next section exists. Our sample leans toward US tech and nonprofits; a hospital or a council posting in your area may read differently. The endpoint we read is public, so anyone can repeat the count (the script is in the pull request that published this article).
When the posting gives no name and no title
Look at the posting a second time. The team name is almost always there ("the Growth team", "our Trust and Safety org"), even when the manager is not. "Dear Growth team hiring manager," or "Dear Trust and Safety team," is specific enough, and it is honest about what you know.
Then, and only then, the company's team page or LinkedIn. Spend five minutes, not an hour. If you find a name, write it in full: "Dear Priya Natarajan,". No "Mr" or "Ms", because you are guessing, and a wrong guess is read before anything else in your letter. If you do not find one, "Dear Hiring Manager," is fine. Nobody has been rejected for it.
What to drop: "To Whom It May Concern" says you do not know who you are writing to and did not try to find out. "Hi there" and "Hey" belong in a chat window.
The UK still has a rule for "Dear Sir or Madam"
Every ranking guide calls "Dear Sir or Madam" dated. The UK government's National Careers Service still prescribes it. Its covering letter page says:
"If you still cannot find a name, you can start your letter with 'Dear Sir or Madam'."
and ties the sign-off to the greeting:
"If you know the name of the person you're writing to, you should end the letter with 'Yours sincerely'." "If you've addressed the letter 'Dear Sir or Madam', you should end the letter with 'Yours faithfully'."
So the greeting is a regional decision. Applying to a UK public body, a law firm or a traditional employer, "Dear Sir or Madam" with "Yours faithfully" is the expected pair, and "Dear Hiring Manager" reads American. Applying to a US company or a startup anywhere, "Dear Hiring Manager" with "Sincerely" or "Best regards" is the norm, and "Dear Sir or Madam" reads like a template. Pick one pair and keep it consistent from the first line to the last.
The first sentence has one job
The greeting is a formality. The opening sentence is the first thing the reader evaluates, and it has one job: give them a reason to read the second sentence. "I am writing to apply for the Product Designer role I saw on LinkedIn" fails because the reader already knows all three facts. The form told them the role, the source and that you are applying.
A first sentence that works contains one of three things: a fact about the company you could only know by reading, a number from your own work, or a name they know. Everything else (enthusiasm, passion, "I have always admired") is an opinion the reader cannot check.
Example one opening sentence rewritten from the posting
Says nothing new
I am writing to express my strong interest in the Senior Manager, Application Security position at Northwind Pay, which I found on your careers page.
Built from the reporting line
Your posting says this role reports to the Head of Security and owns the bug bounty program. I ran one for three years at a payments company, cut median triage time from 9 days to 2, and would start with yours.
Keep the opening to two or three sentences, and keep the tone of the posting. A posting written in "you'll ship fast and own outcomes" invites a direct first line. A posting written in "the successful candidate will demonstrate" wants a formal one.
5 opening lines, each built from something in the posting
Ranking guides give five types of opener too, and theirs are good. The difference here is the source: each one starts from a line you can find in the job ad, so you are not inventing a hook.
1. The problem the role exists to solve
Find the sentence that says why the job is open: "to scale our onboarding from 40 to 200 hires a quarter", "to build the first data platform". Then say what you have done with that exact problem.
Your posting says the first hire on this team will build the data platform from scratch. I did that at a 60-person logistics startup in 2024: dbt on BigQuery, 14 sources, first dashboards in six weeks, and the two engineers I hired still run it.
2. One number, then the connection
Take your best result that matches the top requirement. One number, one sentence of context, one sentence linking it to their requirement. Do not list three results; the body of the letter is for that.
The role asks for someone who has cut support response times. At Lumo I took first-reply time from 11 hours to 90 minutes in two quarters by rewriting 40 macros and adding a triage queue. I would like to do the same for your 24-hour SLA.
3. A checkable fact about the company
Not "I admire your mission". Something specific that happened: a product you used and what it did, a change in the posting itself, a public number. The test is whether the reader could verify it in thirty seconds.
Your October release notes say Blocks now exports to Figma. I have been running a Blocks workspace for a 12-person design team since March, and the export is why we stopped paying for a second tool. I would like to work on what comes after it.
4. The career change, stated in one sentence
If your last title does not match the role, say so before the reader works it out. Name the move, the one transferable result, and what you have already done to close the gap. Our guide to the career change resume covers the same move on the CV side.
After six years as a nurse I am moving into clinical product, and I have spent the last year doing the first step: I sat on the hospital's EHR rollout committee and wrote the triage workflow 300 nurses now use. Your posting asks for someone who has watched clinicians fight bad software. I have, from both sides.
5. The referral, with the name and the context
A name the reader knows is the strongest opener there is, as long as it is true and the person expects to be named. Say who, how you know them, and what they said about the role. Then move on; the name opens the door, your proof keeps it open.
Daniel Okafor on your platform team suggested I apply after we worked together on the Stripe migration at Kable; he said the role needs someone who has moved a billing system without downtime. We did that in March 2025, 2.1 million subscriptions, zero failed charges.
Pick one. A letter that tries two openers has no opener.
When the letter goes into a form box
The greeting advice above assumes your letter is a document. Often it is not. When we read the application forms behind 390 Greenhouse postings for our cover letter structure guide, 78% had an optional cover letter field, and all 323 forms with a field accepted either a file upload or text typed straight into a box. Only 5 of the 390 posting texts mentioned a cover letter at all.
In a text box there is no header, no date and no address block. The field's label already says what it is. So:
- Drop the header and the date. Start with the greeting, or skip the greeting and start with the opening sentence. Both are fine; "Dear Hiring Manager," followed by a strong first line is the safe default.
- Your opening sentence is line one of the box. The recruiter sees it in the applicant list, often truncated to a preview. "I am writing to apply" is the preview nobody opens.
- Keep the sign-off to one line. "Best regards, Priya Natarajan". No address under it.
If the form has a separate "Why do you want to work here?" box, that box is your opening paragraph. Put the company fact or the problem the role solves there, and use the cover letter field for your proof.
What costs you the opening
Greeting and first lines what to cut and what to write instead
Loses the reader
"Dear Ms Chen" when you guessed the honorific
"I am writing to apply for the role I saw on LinkedIn"
"I have always been passionate about fintech"
A joke, a question or a quote as the first line
Three achievements in the first paragraph
Earns the second sentence
"Dear Wei Chen" or "Dear Director of Data Engineering"
The problem the posting says the role solves, and your result on it
One product, release or number of theirs you can name
The posting's own tone, formal or direct
One number, then the link to their requirement
One rule under all of them: if the sentence could open a letter to any other company, it is not an opening, it is a delay.
Starting the letter with HiredFolio
HiredFolio writes a first draft of the letter from the job you saved (title, company, requirements, description) and the resume you pick (your headline, summary, skills and the achievement lines of your experience). The generator is instructed not to invent employers, degrees or metrics, and to write in the tone you choose, from formal to direct. It is not told to add a header, date, greeting or sign-off, so check the top of the draft and write the first lines yourself with the rules above. If you translate the draft into French, the translation is told to open with "Madame, Monsieur," unless your original named the recipient.
Try HiredFolio for free: save the posting with the extension, pick the resume, and spend your ten minutes on the two lines that are read first.
Key takeaways before your next application
Search the posting for "reports to" before you search LinkedIn: one in six says who the role reports to, and that title is also your first sentence's brief.
Open with a fact the reader can check: the problem the role solves, one number from your work, or a name they know. Delete any first sentence that starts with "I am writing".
Match the pair to the country: "Dear Sir or Madam" with "Yours faithfully" for a traditional UK employer, "Dear Hiring Manager" with "Sincerely" for the US and startups.
The rest of the letter is here: how to write a cover letter, with a full annotated example.
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