You’ve done the often tedious and time-consuming job of tailoring your resume and writing a great cover letter for a job you’re excited to apply to. Now what?

 It would be a shame to put it out there into what seems like the black hole of applications and just wait. (Not convinced you should reach out after applying? Read this.) But how do you figure out who the right person is to reach out to in order to improve the chances that a human reviews your materials and you get an interview?

General Norms of Who Oversees Hiring Processes

The first question to ask yourself is, “who is overseeing the hiring process?” This can depend on a number of factors, including the size/maturity/industry of the organization hiring. 

Here are some norms to consider based on the experiences of our clients. You’ll see that these norms are often tied to the organization’s size and the type of role you’re applying to.

For mid-and large size organizations with an HR department, it’s likely to be a member of the HR team – either an internal recruiter/talent acquisition person that’s shepherding the process – sourcing candidates, scheduling interviews, performing initial screen interviews, and following up with candidates.

Depending on the size of the organization,the maturity of the HR shop, and the number of open roles, sometimes key pieces of the hiring process are  outsourced to  external recruiters. External recruiters can provide support by overseeing  each of the phases outlined above. Their role in the hiring process will vary based on the needs of the organization who is doing the outsourcing. 

 If you’re applying for a very senior role (think C-suite, or one step removed), the hiring process might be overseen by an executive search firm with a specific partner or search consultant (or two!) leading that specific search.

For many small organizations, the person looking through resumes is often likely to be the hiring manager themselves! (Most times the hiring manager is the person who the position reports to.) In these cases, it’s even more beneficial to write a compelling cover letter that highlights your enthusiasm for the role and organization.  

So, now that you understand the norms, what do you do from here? These three steps outline different options you can use to identify the right person to reach out to after applying. 

Step One: Try These Fast & Easy Hacks.

1. Go to the company’s LinkedIn page and look under the ‘Jobs’ tab to find the posting. Sometimes, (especially if you have LinkedIn premium), it will list the person who posted the job. A “Meet the hiring team” section will pop up on the job posting (it will look like the below image) and will link to the specific person. Score!

2. Put the name of the job title and company in the search bar on LinkedIn (Ex: Social Media Manager Peloton). Then filter by ‘Posts’ and you’ll see if anyone has promoted the job through a post. Oftentimes the person who posted the job will be helping to source candidates and/or can let you know who the right person to reach out to might be. Plus – if you message someone and attach the text/image of the post, it will seem as if you’re connected in some way, making it more likely someone will respond to you.  

The second hack works a lot of the time. But when it doesn’t, go to step two.

Step Two: Narrow Potential Options for Who is Overseeing the Hiring Process

First, start by thoroughly reading the job posting – many times it will say “This position reports to [title of person].” If that’s the case, your work is super easy! Bring up LinkedIn or the company website and search for the person with that title!

If it’s a search being conducted by a search firm, it will probably be clear in the job posting – it will name the search firm - and if you’re lucky - it might even name the specific person(s) in the search firm conducting the search.

If you’re still coming up empty, that narrows your likely options to either the hiring manager and/or a recruiter or talent acquisition person.

This is when LinkedIn is your best friend. You want to use it to narrow your options and find all the potential folks that could be involved in searching for this role.

1. Search for the organization on LinkedIn and bring up the company profile

2. Click through ‘People’ to explore the full list of people who are affiliated with the organization. (Note, not everyone listed under ‘People’ are employees; they might be past employees, volunteers, alumni, or have another affiliation with the organization.)

3. Further search through the list of employees with more detailed filters to narrow the search. Put “HR” or “Recruiter” and/or “Talent Acquisition” in as a filter, or search for the role/function that’s connected to the job you applied for. For example, if you applied for a Senior Marketing Manager role, search for all the folks in the company who work in marketing by using ‘Marketing’ as a search filter.

4. You’ll likely have to look through a lot of profiles to see who might be most likely to be connected to this search.

At the end of this step, you might have a few names of recruiters who could be overseeing the search, and/or folks on the team the job is on that could also be involved in the search.

Step Three: Make an Educated Guess.

By this stage, you’ve got a few people identified. Now, you have to make an educated guess.

When in doubt, go straight to the hiring manager. Even if an internal or external recruiter is in charge of stewarding the process, the hiring manager will still likely flag incoming or proactively send over candidates that they want included in the pool. And a lot of the time, recruiters are overrun with outreach messages to look at applications. So, why not go straight to the most important decision maker!?

The only time we don’t suggest this is if the search is led by an executive search firm – in that case, reach out to someone at the search firm. For really high-level roles, the hiring manager might be the CEO, and unless you have a connection with them, it’s likely bothersome to them and they’ll most likely just refer you to the search firm anyway.

Ready to reach out and need to make sure you’ve got a great outreach note? Read on for more here.