How to Find the Hiring Manager for Any Role in Ten Minutes (Free)
Applying through the portal puts you in a pile. Reaching the person who owns the role puts you in a conversation. Here is exactly how to find them.
An application through a careers portal goes into a queue with two hundred others. A short, polite message to the person who will actually manage the role goes to an inbox with maybe six things in it. Same effort, very different odds.
The only hard part is finding the person. It is not hard.
Step 1: work out the job title of the person above the role
If the opening is Customer Support Specialist, you want the Head of Support, Support Manager, or Customer Experience Lead. If it is Junior Developer, you want the Engineering Manager or CTO in a small company. If it is Content Writer, Head of Content or Marketing Manager.
For companies under about fifty people, aim one level higher than you think. In small teams the founder often still hires directly.
Step 2: search LinkedIn properly
In the LinkedIn search bar type the company name, press enter, then open the company page and click People. You can filter that list by job title. Type "support" or "engineering" and you will see everyone in that function.
If the company page is thin, search instead for: company name + the title you want. For example: Paystack Head of Support.
Step 3: confirm they are the right person
Open their profile. Do they manage the function the role sits in? Have they posted about hiring recently? Have they been at the company long enough to own the decision? If yes to the first, that is enough.
Step 4: if you need their email
Most companies use one pattern: firstname@company.com, or firstname.lastname@company.com, or first initial plus lastname. Find one confirmed company email — often on the website contact page, a press release, or a team member’s public profile — and copy the pattern.
Honestly though, a LinkedIn message is usually better for a first contact. It is less intrusive and they are already logged in.
Step 5: apply through the portal anyway
This matters. Apply properly first, so you exist in their system, then send the message. The message is not instead of the application, it is a signal that the application exists and is worth opening.
What to do when there is no one findable
Some companies genuinely hide their team. In that case, apply through the portal, then follow the company page so their next post appears in your feed, and comment something useful on it. Being a familiar name is worth more than nothing.
The time budget
Ten minutes per role. Which means you cannot do this for sixty applications a week, and you should not try. Do it for the ten roles you genuinely want.
Tomorrow: the message itself, line by line, and why each line is there.