I’ve written before about why cold emailing is such an effective way to escape the resume slush pile. A cold email gets you directly in front of the hiring manager (not a recruiter or any go-between) and gives you a chance to put your best foot forward in a way a plain old resume simply can’t.

In my last post, I wrote about how to find the right person to contact when you send a cold email. While I still believe that your first step should be to look through AngelList to find companies you are excited to work at, I have another trick for finding hiring managers who are open to getting an email for you.

The hack

On LinkedIn, hiring managers often post “hiring!” or “I’m hiring!” or “We’re hiring!” in their bios when they’re looking to hire candidates. They will often also include their email address in their profile. This is an active solicitation for people to email them, and it’s a great way to get your foot in the door on a cold email. If you find one of these people, you just send an email that starts like this:

“Hi [HIRING MANAGER’S FIRST NAME],

I noticed on LinkedIn that you are hiring data scientists at [COMPANY].”

And go from there.

Search terms

To find these hiring managers, start by running one of the following searches on LinkedIn:

• “data science” + “hiring”
• “data science” + “hiring” + “email”
• “data science” + “i’m hiring”

You will get slightly different results depending on which search terms you use.

These three searches almost always return data science managers who are actively hiring. However, not all of the managers you find through these searches will have their email listed in their profile. If they don’t explicitly share their email on LinkedIn, you can follow the usual steps to find the email address for that hiring manager. Meanwhile, you can still begin your email with, “I noticed on LinkedIn that you’re looking to hire [ROLE].”

A hiring manager who advertises that they are hiring on LinkedIn is giving a strong signal that they are actively looking to talk to people they haven’t met, so a cold email has a higher chance of success under these conditions.

The surefire email address

If you want an almost certain chance of finding an email address on a LinkedIn profile, here’s what you search for:

• “data science” + “hiring” + “email me”

This search almost always returns people with an email address on their LinkedIn profile. There’s also a strong chance that this search will turn up data science managers who are actively hiring. However, the downside of this search is that you must beware of time-wasters. A lot of “email me” types have things like “email me if you want to chat about data science!” This may result in you finding yourself having casual conversations and informational interviews when what you really want is a job. So assess on a case-by-case basis whether you think these individuals are serious and seriously hiring or not.

Check the sidebar

As you visit the LinkedIn profiles of these folks who are hiring, you’ll find other recommended profiles in the sidebar that *also* say “hiring!” in the bio. This can be another prong of your search: hop from profile to profile and scoop up other data science managers who are actively hiring.

Manage your list

I recommend making a spreadsheet with each hiring manager’s name, their company, and their email address. Meanwhile, don’t forget to do your research. Follow the steps described in the post on how to find the right contact to ensure that:

1. You know what the company does
2. You can articulate why you want to work there
3. You have a specific role in mind (based on their job listings) for which you think you’d be a good fit.

Keep track of these three details in your spreadsheet, too. You’ll want to use that information when it comes time to actually write the email, so you can tailor your content to each company on your list.

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