There’s a lot of discussion of resumes here, but my number use of that phrase is letters written to the IRS. With those letters, I very rarely have an individual name and no way to get one because the issue will be handled by whatever person in that department gets to it in their giant pile of things to do. If I do have a name, I’ll put it on the letter, but a taxpayer has to really screw up to get a person assigned to their tax issue.
Even with resumes, it’s better to put something generic than something wrong. I’m the only owner of my company and there’s only three people working here, so quite a few job hunters put my name on cover letters when they want to appear clever. However, I don’t review the resumes or make the selection of who to interview. I won’t even see your cover letter or resume until fifteen minutes before the interview. So you’re not winning any points by putting my name on the cover letter. It’s a rational mistake, but nevertheless, your first impression with us was to make an incorrect assumption about who to address your letter to.
I follow the rule that the only time “to whom it may concern” is acceptable is on a generic letter of reference, which is designed to be used on multiple occasions with different addressees. Whenever you are writing to a particular person or entity, I think you should address more specifically. Putting “to whom it may concern” to me sounds like concern about your letter is optional.
If you don’t know whom precisely a letter should go, just use something generic but still to someone. In Hari’s case I would just put “Dear Chair,” but you can use “Dear Department Manager” or “Dear Tax Officer” or “Dear Petty Bureaucrat” or whatever.
Anything is better, to me, than “to whom it may concern” which sounds like an airy, diffident indication that you don’t really care if anyone is concerned to read your letter or not.
Call the company? That works only with very small companies, and sure, it might give you an advantage in that situation. Big companies? Good luck. My current company isn’t huge, but I very much doubt that I could find out anything about any specific hiring manager if I called the 800 nimber listed on the website.
Honestly, I’m not even sure I could get through to my boss or a coworker if I called the published number. It’s for sales and customer service; they’re not going to give you anything like a hiring manager’s name before you’d even sent in a resume. After you apply, you’ll get an email from a recruiter if they like what you sent; I’m not sure what you get if you don’t even make it that far.
Good luck with that if you’re applying to my company. Multiple offices in numerous US states (plus some expansions into a few other countries) means … there IS no receptionist here. Not to mention, “call the company” gets you a phone tree.
Wow - it must be my industry. I work in computing, and would never dream of having a cover letter without a name. I’ve applied to Microsoft (and they don’t come much bigger) and was able to get the name of the local hiring manager.
I also work in “computing” if that includes software development. I’ve never had a cover letter WITH a name unless the name was easily found (like, in the ad) and have never had problems finding jobs.
I’m curious, though, how did you find the hiring manager’s name at Microsoft? Was there an email/number listed in the ad or given to you by the recruiter?
Wow! You work in “computing” and are still applying for jobs in writing with cover letters?
Did that particular hiring manager respond to your application?
Did you get the job? And, if so, was it because you addresses your letter to the hiring manager by name?
Secondly, most large corporations are much, much bigger than Microsoft who only have about ~100K employees worldwide 60K in the US (42K of those in Puget Sound)
That’s small potatoes compared to any of the other Fortune 500 companies, in fact, Microsoft does even crack the top 100.
