How to address a cover letter, with or without a name

The National Careers Service asks you to address your cover letter to someone by name, using their preferred title (Dr, Mr, Mrs, Ms) and their job title. Only if you cannot find a name should you fall back on a general greeting. The greeting then decides the sign-off:

• A named person: ‘Dear Mr Reid,’ … ‘Yours sincerely,’
• No name: ‘Dear Hiring Manager,’ or ‘Dear Sir or Madam,’ … ‘Yours faithfully,’

Prospects applies the same rule to every general greeting, job titles included: if you use one, finish with ‘Yours faithfully’. More on the closing lines in our guide on how to end a cover letter.

A name is worth a few minutes of searching. Prospects notes that you are more likely to get a reply when the letter reaches the right person. Work through these in order:

1. The job advert. Many name a contact for informal questions. That person is usually the one to write to.
2. The company website: the team page, the head of the department you would join, the head of HR or a recruitment manager, as the National Careers Service suggests.
3. LinkedIn: search the company, then the job title of your future manager or the in-house recruiter.
4. A phone call or email. Prospects says there is nothing wrong with calling the organisation to ask who to address your application to.

• Title and surname: ‘Dear Ms Patel,’ not ‘Dear Ms Priya Patel,’ and never the first name alone.
• No full stop after the title in British English: Mr, Ms, Mrs, Dr. ‘Mr.’ with a full stop is the American style.
• Ms for a woman unless you know she uses Mrs or Miss: Ms makes no assumption about marital status.
• Dr or Professor when the person holds the title, which is common in universities, the NHS and research: ‘Dear Dr Okafor,’, ‘Dear Professor Lane,’.
• The full name without a title when you are not sure which title the person uses: ‘Dear Sam Taylor,’. It is accepted and avoids a wrong guess.
• A comma after the greeting, then start the first paragraph on a new line with a capital letter.

Copy the spelling of the name from the advert or the company's own website. A misspelt name is the first thing a recruiter notices, and the easiest error to avoid.

Careers advisers disagree about ‘Dear Sir or Madam’. The National Careers Service still gives it as the fallback, while Indeed UK lists it among the greetings to avoid as impersonal or outdated. A job title such as ‘Dear Hiring Manager’ does the same job and shows you thought about who will read the letter. Whichever you choose, end with ‘Yours faithfully’.

‘Address’ has a second meaning: the recipient's details at the top of the letter, under your own. On a printed or posted letter, include the full postal address. For an online application, the University of Manchester's careers service notes that postal addresses are no longer required, so the name, job title, company and town are enough. Put the job reference in the subject line.

If you found no name, start the block with the job title (‘The Hiring Manager’) or the department (‘Recruitment Team’), then the company. The letter below shows a complete header with the greeting in place.

Example letter

Copy the letter

Example

Rhys Morgan

Plymouth

rhys.morgan@example.com

07700 900519

10 November 2026

Dr Ade Okafor

Clinical Lead, Physiotherapy

Harbourside Health Partnership

Plymouth

Re: Physiotherapy Assistant, ref. HHP-0907

Dear Dr Okafor,

I am applying for the Physiotherapy Assistant post (ref. HHP-0907) advertised on your website, where your name is given for informal enquiries. I am a qualified fitness instructor with three years' experience running rehabilitation classes for older adults, and I would like to move into a clinical setting.

At a community leisure centre in Plymouth, I run four strength and balance classes a week for people referred by their GP after a fall. I adapt each exercise to the person, record their progress on a simple chart and report any concerns to the referring team. Attendance has stayed above 85% for two years.

Your advert asks for good communication with patients who may be anxious or in pain, and for careful record keeping. Both are part of every class I run. I also hold a Level 3 qualification in exercise referral and a current first aid certificate.

Thank you for considering my application. My CV, attached, gives more detail, and I would welcome the chance to discuss the role with you.

Yours sincerely,

Rhys Morgan

• Two named contacts, for example a panel: address both, ‘Dear Ms Patel and Mr Reid,’, and end with ‘Yours sincerely’.
• A school: the headteacher, by name and with the title the school uses on its website, unless the advert names someone else. See our teaching assistant cover letter for an example.
• An email to a recruiter who signed with a first name: ‘Dear Hannah,’ is fine, with ‘Kind regards’.
• A speculative application: make the extra effort to find a name, since there is no advert to point to. Head of the department first, then HR.
• A job board message with no named contact: ‘Dear Hiring Manager,’ works there too.

• Spelling the name wrongly, or using the wrong company name left over from your last letter.
• Guessing a gender from a first name: use the full name instead.
• Writing ‘Mrs’ or ‘Miss’ when you do not know which the person uses.
• ‘Dear Sir,’ on its own, which assumes the reader is a man.
• Inventing or guessing a name: ‘Dear Hiring Manager’ beats a made-up one.
• Mixing the pair: ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ with ‘Yours sincerely’, or a named greeting with ‘Yours faithfully’.

In Kandiq's cover letter generator, the recipient's name, job title and company sit in their own fields, and the greeting and sign-off are separate lines that the AI never writes. Type the contact's name, then set the greeting and the sign-off yourself using the rule above: the greeting does not fill itself in from the contact's name, so check both before you send. The AI writes the body from the job advert and your CV (2 AI credits per letter, 5 credits when you sign up).

The review, which runs without any AI, then checks the company named in the body, your contact details, the date, the length on one page and any placeholder left behind. You read the full letter before paying anything; downloading it as a PDF or Word file is part of Kandiq Pro.