Emailing a CEO about a job feels like skipping the queue, and that worry is the wrong one. The right question is whether the CEO is the person who hires for the job you want. At a twelve-person startup that is usually true, and a short note is the most direct route there is. At a company with thousands of staff it almost never is, and the same note lands on a desk that has no reason to act on it.
So the decision comes down to company size and who owns the role. The rest is craft: a note short enough to read between meetings, sent through the channel the CEO actually reads, with a follow-up that does not nag.
When does emailing the CEO about a job make sense?
When the CEO is a founder who still interviews people, which at most startups lasts until the team is a few dozen strong. Below that size the CEO often reads hiring email personally, because there is no one else to read it.
Y Combinator’s advice to its own founders backs this up. In a 2018 YC blog post on recruiting engineers, Harj Taggar writes: “If you’re an early stage company (less than 20 people) a founder should always be doing this call with engineering candidates.” In a companion post the same year on hiring a first engineer, he tells founders to expect recruiting to take at least a third of their time. A founder spending that much time on hiring wants to hear from good candidates.
Use the size of the company as your guide:
| Company size | Who usually decides | Write to | Copy or mention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 20 people | The founders, often the CEO | The CEO, or the CTO for engineering roles | Nobody; keep it one-to-one |
| 20 to 100 | A founder plus the first functional leads | The lead who owns your area; the CEO if that lead doesn’t exist yet | Name the posted role if there is one |
| 100 to 1,000 | Hiring managers with a recruiting team | The hiring manager for the team | Apply through the posting as well |
| Over 1,000 | Hiring managers and recruiters in a formal process | The hiring manager or a recruiter | Leave the CEO out |
Two exceptions are worth knowing. If you are applying for a role that reports to the CEO, such as chief of staff or a first marketing lead, the CEO is the hiring manager at almost any size below a few hundred people. And if a CEO has publicly asked candidates to write to them directly, in a post or on a podcast, take them at their word.
Why does a note to a big-company CEO usually go nowhere?
Because the CEO of a large company doesn’t hire for the role you want, so the most you can hope for is a forward to someone who does. That forward can help a little, but you could have written to that person yourself.
At a few thousand people, hiring runs through a process: a hiring manager who owns the headcount, a recruiter who screens, and an applicant tracking system that keeps records. A CEO’s assistant who receives your note has two options: ignore it or pass it into that process. Either way, you have spent your strongest pitch on someone who will not read the follow-up.
The better target at that size is the person the role reports to. How to find a hiring manager’s email covers identifying that person from the job post and LinkedIn, and checking the address before you send.
Email or LinkedIn: which reaches a CEO faster?
Email, in most cases. It arrives in the place the CEO already works, has no character limit, and doesn’t depend on being connected first.
The clearest survey data on channel preference comes from sales, not hiring, so read it as a hint rather than proof. For its 2025 cold email report, Hunter asked 217 decision-makers which channel they prefer to be approached on: “61% chose cold email, leaving LinkedIn (29%) and cold call (10%) far behind.” The same report found irrelevance to be the main reason people ignore cold email, named by 71% of respondents, which matters more for you than the channel does.
LinkedIn is still worth using, especially when you can’t find an email address. Know its limits before you start:
- You can’t message strangers for free. LinkedIn’s help page says you can message “your 1st-degree connections or LinkedIn Pages for free”. Beyond that, you need the CEO to be a Premium member with Open Profile turned on, or you pay for InMail.
- Connection notes are short and rationed. On a free account, LinkedIn says, “You can add a personalized message to up to three connection requests per month”, and “Each message can be up to 200 characters”. Premium members can add notes to every request.
- A #hiring frame is an invitation. When someone adds a job to their profile, LinkedIn’s social hiring page says members viewing the job see a “Meet the Hiring Team” section and can “connect and message the entire team listed in this section, including the job poster.” If the CEO is listed there, a message is expected.
A sensible split: email first if you can find a work address, LinkedIn if you can’t, and not both on the same day. Two channels at once reads as pressure.
How do you cold email a CEO for a job?
Write about their problem, not your job hunt. A CEO reads with one question in mind, “does this help the company?”, so the opening has to answer it in a sentence.
The shape that works is the same four parts a good founder note uses: why now, one piece of proof, a small ask, and a specific subject line. The three founder cold email templates cover those parts in depth for engineering, fresher and product roles. What changes when the reader is a CEO is the altitude. Tie your proof to something the company has said it is trying to do: grow a new market, ship a platform, close bigger customers. A CEO thinks in those terms, and a note that speaks in them gets forwarded with a positive comment instead of a shrug.
Subject: First AE for your mid-market push
Hi [Lena],
Your post last week said [you’re moving upmarket after the Series A, and that the first mid-market deals are closing founder-led].
I’ve spent [four] years selling [workflow software to 200 to 2,000 person companies]. Last year I [closed $1.1M in new business, with a 60-day average cycle].
If you’re planning a first account executive hire, I’d like to take some of those deals off your plate. Would 15 minutes next week work? If someone else owns this, I’d be glad of a pointer.
[Daniel] [LinkedIn URL]
Why each piece is there:
- The subject reads like an internal note about their plan. It is 33 characters, short enough to show in full on a phone.
- The opening quotes something the CEO said in public. It proves you looked, and it frames you as an answer to their stated plan.
- The proof is one number, in their units. A CEO moving upmarket cares about deal size and cycle length, so that is what the sentence gives.
- The ask has an exit. “If someone else owns this” lets a busy CEO reply in five words with a name, which is a good outcome.
Leave out the rest: no attached resume, no paragraph about your passion for the mission, no list of skills. If the company is big enough that the CEO is unlikely to own the hire, the exit line matters most, because a forward from the CEO’s inbox carries some weight with whoever receives it.
What should a LinkedIn message to a CEO say?
Two messages, not one: a connection note that earns the accept, then a fuller message once you are connected. The first has 200 characters on a free account, so it carries one fact and one hook.
Connection note (164 characters): Hi [Priya], saw [the Series A and the plan to launch in Germany]. I [led the DACH rollout at a 40-person fintech] and would like to help with yours. Open to a short chat?
After they accept: Thanks for connecting, [Priya]. The [German launch] caught my eye because [I ran the same move at [company]: local payments, the BaFin paperwork and the first ten hires in Berlin]. We [went from zero to 300 paying customers in nine months].
If you’re hiring someone to own that launch, I’d like to talk. 15 minutes this week or next? If it’s someone else’s call, a name would be just as helpful.
Count your characters before you send; LinkedIn cuts the note off at the limit, and a sentence that stops mid-word undoes the care in the rest. If the CEO shows an Open Profile or you have InMail credits, you can send the fuller message straight away, but keep the same length. A wall of text is no more welcome on LinkedIn than in email.
What not to send: “I’d love to pick your brain”, a pasted cover letter, or a request to “keep me in mind for future roles”. Each asks the CEO to do work for you without a reason to.
Where does Backdoor fit when the CEO is a founder?
At the small startups where emailing the CEO makes sense, Backdoor takes over the part that eats your evenings: finding the right companies and the founder’s address.
Every morning it reads the places where new startups surface (YC batches, Product Hunt launches, TechCrunch and Crunchbase funding reports, Wellfound, GitHub, other funding news and company careers pages) and shortlists the ones whose work fits your background. Next it finds the founder’s email address and writes the note for you, and each draft links that startup’s news to your background, much like the CEO template above.
You stay in charge of every send: a draft waits until you answer SEND, and the approved note goes out from your Gmail address, which means any answer lands in your inbox. Silence gets as many as three nudges inside the original thread, and a reply triggers a text to your phone.
The fit has a clear edge. Backdoor targets companies from pre-seed through Series C, and its own FAQ steers people who want to mass-apply at big companies elsewhere. That matches the size table above: it covers the rows where the CEO is worth writing to, and leaves the large-company rows to hiring-manager outreach and normal applications. Finding startups and researching your background are free; the sending is paid.
What gets a note to a CEO ignored?
Mostly the same things that sink any cold email, with a few that bite harder at the CEO’s level:
- A note that could go to any company. Hunter’s survey makes irrelevance the leading reason for no reply. If you can swap the company name and nothing breaks, rewrite it.
- Asking for a job instead of offering help. “Are you hiring?” makes the CEO check. “I’d like to take these deals off your plate” gives them a reason to.
- Going around the person who owns the role. If the company has a head of engineering and you are an engineer, write to that person first. Leapfrogging a manager you would report to can start the relationship badly.
- Copying several executives on one email. It looks like a mass send, and each reader assumes another will reply.
- Following up too often. Two or three follow-ups in the same thread, several days apart, each adding something new, is plenty. Job-search follow-up tools compares tools that keep the dates for you.
What should you do if the CEO forwards you to someone else?
Treat it as a win and move fast. A forward from the CEO is a warm introduction, and the person receiving it will usually reply.
Reply the same day to the person you were forwarded to, thank the CEO briefly (moving them to Bcc so their inbox stays clear), and keep the new thread about the role. Don’t send the CEO a second pitch; they have done what you asked. If the new contact goes quiet, follow up with them, not with the CEO.
If the CEO replies with a no, thank them in one line and ask whether you can check back in a few months. Small companies change fast after a raise, and a polite no is often a “not yet”.
Three CEO notes by Thursday: a plan
- Pick three companies where the CEO is likely to own your hire: under about 50 people, or a role that reports to the CEO.
- Find one recent thing each CEO said or did: a post, a raise, a launch, a podcast. If you can’t find one, pick a different company.
- Find the address. Look for a published one first; finding a startup founder’s email walks through patterns and verification if there isn’t one.
- Write three different notes from the template above, each under 100 words, and send each one from your personal address early on a working day.
- Use LinkedIn only where email failed, with a 200-character note and the fuller message after the accept.
- Put two follow-up dates in your calendar before you send, and stop after the second or third.
If your applications have been going nowhere, applied to 200 jobs and no response covers what to check before you change channels.
How we chose
We compare tools on what their own public pages say, checked on the dates shown, and label every claim. How we compare tools.
FAQ
Should I email the CEO for a job
At a small startup, yes: the CEO is usually a founder who still runs hiring, so the note reaches the person who decides. At a company with its own recruiting team, write to the manager the role reports to instead, because a note to the CEO tends to be forwarded into the normal pipeline. The size of the company decides this more than the boldness of the move.
How to cold email a CEO for a job
Write about a goal the CEO has stated in public, such as a new market or a bigger class of customer, and give one result of yours measured in the same terms. Ask for 15 minutes, but add an exit such as "if someone else owns this, a pointer would help", so a busy CEO can answer with a name. Send it from your own address, follow up once or twice in that thread, then stop.
How to reach out to a CEO for a job on LinkedIn
Send a connection request with a short note, because LinkedIn only lets you message people you are connected to, unless they have an Open Profile or you pay for InMail. LinkedIn's help page says free members can add a note to three requests a month, up to 200 characters each, so make each one count. Once they accept, send a fuller message with your one result and a small ask.
LinkedIn message to CEO for job
As a connection note, try something like: "Saw the Series A. I built the billing system for a 40-person SaaS team and would like to help you scale yours. Open to a short chat?" After they accept, follow with three or four sentences: what you noticed, what you did that fits, and a small ask. Keep both specific to their company; a note that could go to any CEO gets skipped.
Is it okay to message the CEO of a 15 person startup about a job or is that weird
It is normal at that size, because the CEO is usually one of the founders and often the only person hiring. YC's Harj Taggar tells founders of companies under 20 people that a founder should always take the first call with engineering candidates. Write one specific note to a work address, follow up a couple of times in the same thread, and stop if there is no reply; a tool like Backdoor can find that founder's address and draft the note for your approval.
Sources checked
Show 7 sources
- Convincing Engineers to Join Your Team | Y Combinator, checked
- How to Hire Your First Engineer | Y Combinator, checked
- The state of cold email 2025 (Hunter), checked
- Personalize invitations to connect | LinkedIn Help, checked
- Send messages on LinkedIn | LinkedIn Help, checked
- Jobs through social hiring | LinkedIn Help, checked
- Backdoor: AI job agent that emails startup founders for you, checked