Key findings
✓The hiring manager is the person whose team you would join, usually the team lead. Not HR, and usually not the recruiter. At a small startup it is often a founder.
✓The manual method has four steps: read the job post for the team, find who leads it, work out the company's email format, check the address.
✓Companies usually give every employee the same address pattern. Find it from public addresses of named people at that company, never from what is common elsewhere.
✓A guessed address is a risk: bounces hurt your own Gmail's sending reputation, and enough of them push your emails toward spam.
✓Doing this by hand takes real time per person. Studojo does it for you: it finds the person who can actually hire you, verifies the address, writes the email and sends it from your Gmail.
~242
applications an average job opening draws, so a portal application joins a crowd
The Interview Guys, April 2026, citing Business Insider data (reported)
0.1% to 2%
typical success rate cited for a single online application
The Interview Guys, April 2026 (reported)
4,000+
students matched with hiring managers through Studojo, out of 8,500+ signed up
Studojo's own records, September 2026
The hiring manager is the person the role reports to. They run the team you would join, they feel the pain of the empty seat, and they make the final call. In a big company that is a team lead, an engineering manager or a head of a function. At a ten-person startup it is often a founder.
HR and the careers inbox are not the same thing. A generic HR address handles every role at once and sits furthest from the decision. A recruiter is closer: they screen candidates for the role. But the person who reads your email and thinks "I need this person on my team" is the hiring manager.
Who to email, by closeness to the hiring decision (Studojo editorial rating)
Studojo's position: auto-apply bots and spray-and-pray applications do not work. What works is a short, personal, specific email to the person who actually hires, sent from your own email address. Everything below is about finding that person.
The job post is your map. Read it for the team, not just the title. A "Growth Marketing Intern" post usually names the growth team, a location and sometimes the title the role reports to.
Pull the team name from the post. Look for "you will join the X team", "reports to the Head of Y" and the city. Those three details narrow the search fast. Check who posted it. Some LinkedIn job posts show the person who posted the role under "Meet the hiring team". Often that is a recruiter, sometimes it is the manager. Search the company's people on LinkedIn. Open the company page, go to People, and search the team keyword ("growth", "data", "brand"). Look for Lead, Manager or Head of titles in the right city. Confirm they are current. Check the role is their present one and that their recent posts match the team. People move, and an old title sends you to the wrong person. Cross-check on the company site. Team pages, blog bylines, press releases and conference talks often name who leads what. Do it by hand on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's terms ban bots and automation tools, including browser add-ons that scrape or automate the site (LinkedIn User Agreement, section 8.2). Searching and reading profiles yourself is fine. Installing something to pull data for you is not.
Companies usually give everyone an address built the same way. Find two or three public addresses of named people at that company and the pattern shows itself. Good places to look: the company's own website, press releases with a named media contact, the job post itself (some list a recruiter's address), event and speaker pages, and research papers or open source projects where staff list a work address.
| Pattern | Address shape | Watch out for |
|---|
| First name | [first]@company.com | Two people with the same first name. Later hires may get a variation. |
| First dot last | [first].[last]@company.com | Middle names, double surnames and initials used as first names. |
| Initial dot last | [f].[last]@company.com | Easy to confuse with the version without a dot. |
| Initial plus last | [f][last]@company.com | Clashes between people with the same initial and surname. |
| First plus last | [first][last]@company.com | Long names sometimes get shortened. |
| First plus last initial | [first][l]@company.com | Some companies add a dot, some do not. |
| Underscore | [first]_[last]@company.com | Rare enough that one public example is not proof. |
We list these as patterns, not a ranking. Which format is "most common" across companies does not matter. The only format that matters is the one this company uses, and only its own public addresses can tell you that.
Two more traps. Many companies run more than one domain (a regional domain, an old brand name, a parent group), so check which one people actually use. And names in India often have several valid spellings, so the address may use a short form of the name on the person's LinkedIn profile.
Here is where the manual way gets risky. A pattern applied to a name gives you a likely address, not a confirmed one. Send to it and you find out only when it bounces.
One bounce costs you one email. A run of them costs more. Email providers watch how often your messages fail to deliver, and a sender who keeps hitting addresses that do not exist starts to look like a spammer. Your own Gmail is the account you will use for every application, interview and offer. It is not the place to experiment.
Bounce risk, by how you got the address (Studojo editorial rating)
Search the full address in quotes. If it appears on a public page next to that person's name, you are on solid ground. Look for the pattern more than once. One public address could be an exception. Three that match is a pattern. Never "test" by sending. Sending and waiting for a bounce is the exact behaviour that damages your sending reputation. "A guessed address is not an address. It is a bounce you have not seen yet."
The Studojo rule for every cold emailNone of these steps is hard. All of them take time, and you repeat every one for every company. The checking step is the hardest to do well by hand, and it is the one that protects your inbox.
Effort per person, manual method, by step (Studojo editorial rating)
| Step | Manual way | With Studojo |
|---|
| Find the person | Job post, LinkedIn, company site | Done for you Finds the hiring manager or team lead, not a generic HR inbox |
| Get the address | Work out the format, then hope | Done for you Verifies their email address |
| Write the email | From scratch, for each person | Done for you A personal email for that one person, based on your background and their work |
| Send it | Copy, paste, send | Your inbox Sent from your own Gmail |
We built Studojo to do exactly this. It finds the person who can actually hire you, verifies their email address, writes a personal email for that one person based on your background and their work, and sends it from your own Gmail. So far: 8,500+ students signed up, 4,000+ matched with hiring managers and 28,000+ personal emails sent from students' own Gmail (Studojo's own records, September 2026). Replies are not guaranteed, but you are writing to a person, not a pile.
How do I find the hiring manager for a job?
Start with the job post: it tells you the team and often the level the role reports to. Then search LinkedIn for people at that company who currently lead that team, and check the company's team page, blog and press releases. At a small startup, the hiring manager is often a founder.
How do I find a hiring manager's email address?
Find the person first, then work out the company's email format from addresses of named employees that the company has published, and apply that pattern to the person's name. Check the address before you send, because a guessed address that bounces hurts your own sending reputation. Studojo does this for you: it finds the person who can actually hire you, verifies the address, writes the email and sends it from your own Gmail.
Who is the hiring manager, and is it the recruiter?
Usually not. The hiring manager is the person the role reports to, the one whose team you would join and who makes the final call. The recruiter runs the process and screens candidates. Both are worth reaching, but the hiring manager sits closest to the decision.
How do I find a recruiter's email?
Use the same method: find the recruiter on LinkedIn (the job post sometimes shows who posted it), work out the company's email format, and check the address. Some job posts list a recruiter's address directly, which also shows you the company's format. A recruiter is a good second contact, but email the hiring manager first.
What is a company email format, and how do I find it?
It is the pattern a company uses for every employee address, such as first.last@ or first@ followed by the company domain. Find two or three public addresses of named people at that company, on its website, press releases, job posts or event pages, and see which pattern they share. Do not assume a format because it is common elsewhere.
What happens if I email the wrong address?
It bounces, and the person never sees it. One bounce is harmless, but a run of them tells email providers you send to addresses you do not know, and your own emails can start landing in spam. That is why you check the address first instead of sending and hoping.
Stop adding to the pile. Reach the person who decides, with an address you trust:
Person first. Find the team lead from the job post and LinkedIn before you think about the address. Format from evidence. Use the company's own public addresses, never a guess about what is common. Check before you send. A bounce costs more than one email. It costs your inbox's reputation. Or skip the grind. Studojo finds the person, verifies the address, writes the email and sends it from your Gmail. Skip the guesswork. Email the person who hires.
Studojo finds the hiring manager, verifies their email, writes a personal email for that one person and sends it from your own Gmail.