How to find the right email address for a job

1. 1

   The address in the post

   Whoever wrote it: a founder, a hiring manager, HR, a recruiter, or an employee offering a referral. A named person comes before a shared mailbox.
2. 2

   A hiring address on the company's site

   careers@, jobs@ or hiring@, or the address on a specific job's page. It is read by the people who hire.
3. 3

   The application portal the post names

   If the post only says to apply on a portal, apply there; an email may still help if a person's address is published too.
4. 4

   The general inbox, last

   hello@ or contact@, only when nothing else is published, and say clearly which role you are writing about.

Skip addresses published for something else: press@, support@, billing@ or investors@. Writing to them about a job reads as careless.

• The post itself, including the comments under it: authors often add “send your resume to” there.
• The company's careers page, and the page for that one job.
• The footer or contact page of the company's website.
• The job's listing on the company's own job board (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby), which may name a contact.

Tools that guess firstname@company.com or check patterns can be wrong, and a wrong address bounces. Bounces make your own Gmail look less trustworthy to other inboxes, so later emails are more likely to land in spam. And a right guess still reaches someone who didn't ask to be written to. A published address doesn't have either problem.

Some posts come from an agency recruiter hiring for a company they don't name. That is fine to answer: write to the recruiter, and expect them to ask before passing your resume on. Be careful with anyone who asks you to pay a fee for a job or training.