How to Write a Cold Email to a Remote Hiring Manager

For a Nigerian applicant, that last point matters more than most guides admit. A hiring manager in Berlin or New York will often wonder whether you can legally be paid, whether your hours overlap with theirs and whether you are real. This guide shows you how to find the right person and their contact details. You'll also get a structure and three example messages you can adapt, a send-time table for Lagos, LinkedIn's current messaging limits, how to follow up and the warning signs that a reply is a scam.

Quick answer

To write a cold email to a remote hiring manager, find the person who leads the team you'd join and confirm their work email. Then write under 180 words: a specific subject line, one line on why you're writing to them, one concrete result or work sample, a sentence covering your location, working hours and contract setup, and one small ask. Schedule it for their morning and follow up once after about a week.

When a cold email to a hiring manager is worth sending

A cold email is an unsolicited message to someone you have never dealt with. It works best when it adds something an application form can't. It works worst when it simply repeats your CV.

The third row trips up a lot of people. Some remote roles are only open to people who live in, or have work authorisation in, a specific country, because of tax, payroll or data rules. No amount of charm in your email will fix that. If you're unsure how to read those restrictions, see why some remote jobs are not open to Nigerians before you write.

If a contact can introduce you, ask for that instead. Our guide on asking for a referral for a remote job covers the wording.

Who to contact: hiring manager, recruiter or founder

The hiring manager is the person who will manage you and who signs off on the hire. For a support role, that's usually the Support Lead or Head of Customer Experience. For a backend developer, it's the Engineering Manager. For a marketing coordinator, it's the Head of Marketing or Growth.

Who you write to depends on the size of the company:

• Startups under about 50 people: the founder or the head of the function often hires directly. Email them.
• Mid-sized remote companies: go to the team lead or manager for the role. Copy nobody.
• Large companies: recruiters handle volume. A note to the recruiter named on the ad is often more useful than chasing a senior manager you'll never reach.

Write to one person per company at a time. If you email five people at the same firm on the same day, they compare notes, and you look like you're spamming them.

How to find a hiring manager's name and email address

Find the name first

Start with the job ad itself. Many remote companies say who the role reports to ("You'll report to our Head of Support"). Then check:

1. The company's team or about page.
2. LinkedIn: search the company, open the People tab and filter by department or job title.
3. The company blog, engineering blog, changelog or podcast, where managers often write under their own names.
4. GitHub, conference talks or community forums for technical roles.

Make sure the person still works there. LinkedIn profiles go out of date, and emailing someone who left last year wastes your best opening.

Then find and check the email address

Most companies use a standard format, such as firstname@company.com or firstname.lastname@company.com. You can often work out the pattern from an address published on the company's website, a press release or a support page.

Email-finding tools speed this up. Hunter offers a free plan with 50 credits a month as of October 2026. A found email costs one credit, a verification costs half a credit, and failed searches are free. That's plenty for someone sending a handful of carefully targeted emails each week. Treat any tool's result as a best guess and verify it before you send.

Don't send to five guessed address variations at once. Bounced emails can hurt how email providers judge your address. Each wrong guess also lands in someone else's inbox.

If you can't find a work address, use LinkedIn (covered below) or the company's general jobs address with the manager's name in the subject line.

Use an address that looks professional

Send from an address built on your name, such as adaeze.okafor@gmail.com, or from your own domain if you have one. An address like "bigboyslim2005" undoes everything else in the email. Add a simple signature with your full name, role, city and timezone, and one or two links.

The structure of a cold email that gets read

Hiring managers read on their phones between meetings. Your email has to make sense in the preview pane. Keep it to about 120 to 180 words, in four short paragraphs at most.

Subject lines that say what the email is

A vague subject line ("Opportunity", "Request", "Job application") gets skipped. Name the role and add one specific hook:

• "Application: Senior Support Specialist (EMEA), Zendesk admin"
• "Re your Head of Growth post: Lagos-based paid social marketer"
• "Data analyst: built a churn dashboard for a fintech like yours"

Don't use fake "Re:" or "Fwd:" prefixes, clickbait or all capitals. Anyone who hires remotely sees those tricks every week.

The opening: why this person

Open with the reason you're writing to them. Point to something specific and true: the job ad, a post they wrote, a product change, a problem their customers complain about in public reviews. "I saw your post about moving support to 24/5 coverage" earns a second sentence. "I am a hardworking and passionate professional" doesn't.

Skip the biography. Your name is already in the "From" line.

The proof: one result, with a number or a link

Pick the single most relevant thing you've done and say it plainly, ideally with a number and a link. Here are some examples:

• "At my current role I handle 60 to 80 tickets a day in Freshdesk with a 95% CSAT over the last two quarters."
• "Here's a Looker Studio dashboard I built from public data on payment failures: [link]."
• "I rewrote the onboarding emails for a Lagos SaaS company; trial-to-paid conversion rose from 4% to 6% in three months."

Only use numbers that are true and that you could explain in an interview. A link to real work does more than three adjectives. If you're early in your career, a small project you built for this application counts. Our guide on presenting personal projects on an application shows how.

The logistics: answer the Nigeria questions before they're asked

This is the paragraph most templates leave out, and it's the one that removes the hiring manager's doubts. In one or two sentences, say:

• Where you're based and your timezone: "I'm in Lagos (WAT, UTC+1)."
• Your overlap with their hours: "I can work 9am to 5pm UK time" or "I'm happy to cover 2pm to 10pm WAT to overlap with US Eastern mornings."
• How you can be engaged: "I've worked as an independent contractor paid through Deel" or "I'm open to contractor or employer-of-record arrangements."
• Your setup, briefly: "I work on a backed-up power and dual-internet setup."

Don't ask for visa sponsorship or relocation in a cold email for a remote role, unless the ad offers it. If you're unclear on contractor versus EOR employment, read contractor or employee when a foreign company hires you from Nigeria first so you can describe it confidently.

The ask: small and specific

Ask for something easy to say yes to:

• "Would you be open to a 15-minute call next week?"
• "Could you point me to the right person if this isn't you?"
• "I've applied through your careers page; would you mind having a look at my application?"

Avoid "Please consider me for any opening." It hands the manager a task and gives them nothing to act on.

Attachments and links

Many companies' email filters treat attachments from unknown senders with suspicion, and some managers won't open them. Put your CV and portfolio behind links (a Google Drive file set to "anyone with the link can view", a portfolio site, GitHub or LinkedIn) and check every link in a private browser window before you send. If you've already applied through an applicant tracking system, say so instead of attaching your CV again.

Three cold email examples you can adapt

Each example below is hypothetical. The names, companies and numbers are made up to show the structure, not copied from real outreach.

Example 1 (hypothetical): following up an open role

Subject: Applied: Customer Support Specialist (EMEA), Freshdesk + Spanish

Hi Sarah,

I applied yesterday for the Customer Support Specialist (EMEA) role and wanted to put a face to the application, since you'd be managing the role.

For two years I've worked tickets and live chat for a UK e-commerce brand. I handle 70 to 90 conversations a day in Freshdesk, with a 94% CSAT this year. I also cover Spanish-language tickets, which your ad lists as a plus.

I'm based in Lagos (WAT, UTC+1). That's one hour ahead of London in winter and the same time in summer, so your 8am to 4pm UK shift fits my normal hours. I currently work as an independent contractor.

Would you be open to a 15-minute call next week? My CV and two anonymised ticket samples are here: [link].

Thanks, Tunde Bakare Customer Support Specialist | Lagos, WAT | [LinkedIn link]

(About 140 words.)

Example 2 (hypothetical): no vacancy advertised

Subject: Data analyst: churn dashboard built on your public metrics

Hi Marco,

Your blog post on reducing failed card payments in Africa got me curious. I rebuilt the cohort chart from your public data and extended it to show where users drop off after a failed payment: [link to dashboard].

I'm a data analyst (SQL, Python, Looker Studio) with three years in Nigerian fintech, where I built the weekly retention report the ops team runs from.

I'm based in Lagos, on the same clock as Berlin from late October to late March and one hour behind in summer. I've worked with European teams as a contractor before.

You don't have an analyst opening listed. If one comes up, or if a short paid project on churn would help, I'd be glad to talk. Would a 15-minute call in the next couple of weeks work?

Best, Chiamaka Eze

Example 3 (hypothetical): a LinkedIn connection note

LinkedIn's personalised invitation notes are capped at 200 characters, so a note has to be very tight:

"Hi Priya, I applied for your Remote Sales Development Rep role. 3 yrs outbound SaaS, 120% of quota in 2026. Lagos-based, can cover US East hours. Happy to share call recordings."

That's under 200 characters. It names the role, gives one proof point and covers your hours.

When to send: a time-zone table for Lagos

Send so your email arrives around the start of the hiring manager's working day, Tuesday to Thursday if you can. Mondays fill up with backlog and Friday afternoons get ignored. This is common-sense advice, not a measured rule, but it keeps you out of the late-night pile.

Nigeria stays on WAT (UTC+1) all year, while the UK, Europe and the US change their clocks. As of late October 2026, the UK has moved to GMT (since 25 October) and the US moves to standard time on 1 November.

You don't need to stay up for San Francisco. Gmail's Schedule send feature lets you write the email at a sensible hour and set a delivery time in a chosen time zone. You can queue up to 100 scheduled emails, and cancelling one turns it back into a draft you can edit. Double-check the time zone in the scheduling box before you confirm.

LinkedIn message or email: which to use

Email is usually better for a cold approach, because a work inbox is where managers act on things. LinkedIn is the backup when you can't find or verify an address, or when the person is clearly active there (posting, commenting, sharing roles).

Know the limits before you rely on LinkedIn (as of October 2026):

• Connection notes on a free account: LinkedIn's help page on personalised invitations says free members can add a note to up to three connection requests a month, with 200 characters per note. Premium members get unlimited personalised invitations, though general connection limits still apply.
• InMail: according to LinkedIn's InMail credits page, Premium Career includes 5 InMail credits a month, and you can hold up to 15. A credit comes back if the recipient accepts, declines or replies within 90 days. You can't send a second InMail to someone until they've responded to the first, and your balance drops to zero if you cancel Premium.

With only three free notes a month, save them for the hiring managers you most want to reach. Connecting without a note and then messaging after they accept also works, but many people never accept requests from strangers. Before you write to anyone, make sure your profile can stand up to a look. Our guide on writing a LinkedIn profile for remote job opportunities helps here.

How to contact hiring managers about remote opportunities without a vacancy

Speculative outreach (writing when nothing is advertised) is harder, and you should expect most emails to go unanswered. It's worth doing in three situations:

1. The company is growing a team you fit. Signals include new funding announcements, a run of new hires on LinkedIn or job ads for your role's manager.
2. You can show you've already thought about their problem. Example 2 above works because the analyst did a small piece of relevant work first.
3. You're open to a paid trial or short contract. Small companies often find a defined project easier to approve than a full hire.

Keep a simple tracker (company, person, date sent, follow-up date, response) so you don't email the same person twice by accident. Our guide on tracking remote job applications has a template.

Following up without becoming a nuisance

Silence is normal. Managers get buried, travel or simply forget. One polite follow-up after about five to seven working days is reasonable. A second, final one a week or two later is the limit. After that, stop.

Reply in the same thread so the context stays visible, and add something new instead of repeating "just checking in":

"Hi Sarah, a quick follow-up on my note below. Since then I've finished Zendesk's admin training and put together a short sample macro set for returns queries: [link]. Happy to chat if useful."

If they say no, thank them in one line and ask whether you can stay in touch. That reply often gets remembered when the next role opens. For follow-ups after a formal application or interview, see how to follow up after applying for a remote job.

Mistakes that get cold emails ignored

• Mass-mailing one template. If you could swap in another company's name without changing anything, the email is too generic.
• Opening with need. Lines like "I really need this job" or long explanations of hardship put the burden on the reader. Lead with what you can do for them.
• Asking them to read your attached CV and "get back to you". Do the matching work for them in the email.
• Hiding your location. Managers find out anyway, and it then looks evasive. State it plainly with your working hours.
• Ignoring the ad's restrictions. Writing to a "US residents only" role wastes both your time and theirs.
• Writing at length. Anything over about 200 words tends to get "I'll read this later", which in practice often means never.
• Messaging on WhatsApp or personal social accounts. Unless they've invited it, contacting someone outside work channels feels intrusive.
• Typos in their name or company. Check the spelling twice. It's the first thing they see.

Stay safe when a "hiring manager" replies

A real reply from a real company is a good sign, but be alert. Scammers watch job seekers' public posts and sometimes pose as recruiters or managers from well-known companies. They often move quickly to Telegram or WhatsApp. Warning signs include:

• A job offer without a proper interview, or an interview done entirely by text chat.
• Requests for payment for training, equipment, "processing" or a background check.
• Requests for your BVN, bank login, or passport scan before any signed contract.
• Emails from a free webmail address claiming to be a large company, or a domain that's slightly misspelt.

Check that the reply comes from the company's real domain, and look the person up on the company website and LinkedIn. Legitimate employers don't charge you to work for them. Our full guide to spotting remote job scams in Nigeria covers more cases. If you've been contacted by someone on LinkedIn who seems off, see how to identify fake recruiters on LinkedIn.

Frequently asked questions

Is it okay to cold email a hiring manager for a remote job?

Yes. Most hiring managers accept a short, relevant, well-researched message about a role they're hiring for. It's not okay if the ad explicitly asks candidates not to contact the team, or if you send repeated messages after no response. One email and one or two follow-ups is a respectful limit.

Should I apply on the website before emailing the hiring manager?

Yes, if there's an open vacancy. Apply through the official channel first, then email the hiring manager to say you've applied and why you're a strong fit. Many companies can only move candidates through their applicant tracking system, so an email without an application can stall.

How do I find a hiring manager's email if it's not public?

Work out the company's email format from any address published on its website, then check your guess with a verification tool. Tools like Hunter offer a free plan (50 credits a month as of October 2026). If you can't verify an address, message the person on LinkedIn or send your note to the company's jobs inbox with the manager's name in the subject line.

How long should a cold email to a hiring manager be?

Aim for about 120 to 180 words. That's enough for a reason for writing, one piece of proof, your location and hours, and a single ask. Longer emails tend to be put off, and the important details get buried.

Should I mention that I'm in Nigeria?

Yes, plainly and early. Say you're based in Nigeria on WAT (UTC+1), give the hours you can cover in their time zone, and say how you can be engaged (for example as a contractor). Hiding your location only delays the question and makes you look less trustworthy when it comes up.

What if the hiring manager doesn't reply?

Send one follow-up after about five to seven working days, ideally with something new such as a work sample. If there's still no reply after a second short note, move on. Silence usually means they're busy or not hiring, not that you've offended them.

Can I send the same cold email to many companies?

You can reuse the structure, but each email needs its own opening, proof and logistics. A hiring manager can spot a template that's only had the company name changed. Ten tailored emails a week will usually do more for you than a hundred copies.

Key takeaways

• Write to the person who would manage you, one person per company, and verify their address before sending.
• Keep it to about 120 to 180 words: specific subject line, why them, one proof point with a link, your location and hours, one small ask.
• Address the Nigeria questions up front: WAT (UTC+1), the hours you can overlap and how you can be engaged.
• Don't cold email roles restricted to residents or work-authorised people in another country; your email can't change that.
• Schedule emails to arrive at the start of their working day, and follow up no more than twice.
• Treat any reply that asks for money, banking details or a move to Telegram as a likely scam.

Next steps

Pick three companies whose remote roles are open to people in Nigeria and identify the hiring manager for each. Write one tailored email this week using the structure above. You can find suitable roles on WorkRemote's remote job listings. Each listing shows the company, its website and where applicants may live, so you can check eligibility before you write. After a search, turn on the free email alert to get new matching jobs daily. If you'd like help making your CV and LinkedIn profile ready for the hiring manager's first look, see what our team changes on a CV and LinkedIn review, which is part of Premium.

Sources

• Plans & pricing, Hunter
• Schedule emails to send in Gmail, Google Gmail Help
• Personalize invitations to connect, LinkedIn Help
• InMail message credits and renewal process, LinkedIn Help