How to find a recruiter's or hiring manager's email

Short answer: Sales tools like Hunter, Apollo, RocketReach, ContactOut and Lusha find a person's work email if you already know who they are and where they work. They're built for salespeople, use credits, and don't find jobs. DearHiringManager and PitchMe start from a job ad. Sidedoor finds the jobs that fit you and tells you who's hiring for each one, so you know who to contact.

Key points

• You often don't need a guessed email. Many recruiters publish their email in their own hiring posts, and a short LinkedIn message reaches most people hiring in Australia.
• Sales contact tools need a name first. Hunter, Apollo, RocketReach, ContactOut and Lusha look up a person's details. They don't tell you who's hiring for a job. Free plans give a handful of lookups; paid plans start around US$49 a month.
• Hiring-manager finders start from a job ad. DearHiringManager and PitchMe take a job you've found and suggest the hiring manager and their email, for a few dollars or a monthly plan.
• Sidedoor starts earlier. It finds jobs from recruiters' and hiring managers' LinkedIn posts plus job listings, and shows who's hiring for each one. It doesn't look up emails in a sales database.

At a glance

Prices and plans checked on each tool's own site on 25 October 2026. Hunter and Lusha state US dollars; the others show "$" without naming a currency, so check the currency (and any GST) at checkout. Sidedoor is in Australian dollars.

Do you actually need their email?

Usually not. What you need is the right person, and a way to reach them that they'll read.

• Agency recruiters in Australia post jobs on LinkedIn and expect messages about them. Many put their email or mobile right in the post ("send your CV to …"). Their agency's website often lists them too.
• Hiring managers are harder to spot, but once you know who they are, a LinkedIn connection request with a short note works for most people. LinkedIn Premium's InMail helps if they don't accept requests from strangers (see Is LinkedIn Premium worth it for job seekers in Australia?).
• Email is the backup, for when someone doesn't use LinkedIn much or doesn't accept connection requests.

Going direct does happen in Australia. In 2025, 12% of employers who recruited were approached directly by job seekers, and most of those employers hired one of them (Jobs and Skills Australia, 2026). That's most common for lower-skilled jobs, so treat it as a signal, not a promise. If you've been applying and hearing nothing, why that happens is worth a read first.

Which tool fits which job seeker?

The sales contact tools: Hunter, Apollo, RocketReach, ContactOut, Lusha

These five are built for sales and recruiting teams who contact hundreds of people a month. They work well for that, and a job seeker can use the free plans for a few lookups. Here's what each does well, and what to know before you rely on it for a job hunt.

Hunter

Hunter's Email Finder needs the person's full name and their company's email domain, then returns their work email. Every address goes through a verification check first: verified ones get a "Verified" mark, the rest get a confidence score. A search that finds nothing is free.

• Free: 50 credits a month. Paid: Starter is US$49 a month (2,000 credits a month), or US$34 a month billed yearly. Credits reset monthly and don't roll over (Hunter pricing).
• Good for: checking one or two addresses for people you've already found.
• For a job hunt: it can't tell you who's hiring, so you need the name first (how to find the hiring manager).

Apollo

Apollo is a sales platform with a large contact database (it says "240M+ contacts and 30M+ accounts"), email sequences and a Chrome extension. There's a free plan with no card needed.

• Paid: Apollo's pricing page didn't show figures when we checked. Apollo's own article from September 2026 puts Basic at $49 a user a month, billed yearly. Credits are granted each billing cycle and don't roll over (Apollo pricing).
• Good for: searching for people by company and job title.
• For a job hunt: a title search can find a likely manager, but it doesn't know which manager owns the job you're applying for.

RocketReach

RocketReach looks up emails and phone numbers for people and companies. Its own comparison page says you get "up to 5 free lookups per month" when you sign up.

• Paid: prices weren't shown to us on its pricing page on 25 October 2026, so check their site.
• Good for: an occasional lookup.

ContactOut

ContactOut's Chrome extension finds emails and phone numbers from LinkedIn profiles, and it has a search portal. It's aimed at sales teams and recruiters ("Trusted by 1.4M recruiters and sales reps"), and says its data comes from "publicly available professional information and partner datasets, for professional B2B use only".

• Free: 5 emails, 5 phones and 5 exports a day, marked "limited time only".
• Paid: the Email plan is $25 a month without US and UK data, or $49 a month with it; billed yearly it's $19 or $39 a month (ContactOut pricing).
• Good for: looking someone up while you're on their profile.

Lusha

Lusha is sales intelligence for revenue teams. Its free plan is permanent, with 40 credits a month. An email costs 1 credit and a phone number 5.

• Paid: Starter is US$49.90 a month (400 credits a month), or US$37.45 a month billed yearly (Lusha pricing).
• Good for: a few lookups a month on the free plan.

Where they fall short for a job hunt

• They start with a person, not a job. The hard part of a job hunt is knowing who's hiring for this job. These tools assume you already know.
• They're priced for sales volume. Paid plans are monthly subscriptions with credits that mostly reset. A job seeker might need ten good contacts, not two thousand.
• The data is likely, not certain. Even with verification, addresses can be out of date. People move jobs, especially recruiters.
• No job matching. None of them finds jobs or tells you which ones fit you.

The hiring-manager finders: DearHiringManager and PitchMe

These two are built for job seekers and start from a job ad, so they're closer to what most people searching "find hiring manager email" want.

DearHiringManager

Paste the link to one job ad (LinkedIn, Indeed, Greenhouse, Lever or a company careers page) and it returns the likely hiring manager's name, email and LinkedIn. It never sends anything for you: you copy the draft, edit it and send it yourself.

• Free: 3 revealed job postings. Paid: a $15 one-off Job Hunt Pack (20 reveals, use within 90 days), Pro at $19 a month (30 a month), or Ultima from $29 a month (100 a month, with an AI email draft for every contact).
• Searches that find no contact don't use a reveal. On the Job Hunt Pack, it restores a credit if an address bounces (DearHiringManager pricing).
• On accuracy, its FAQ says the emails are "around 85-90% verified by our source".
• Good for: a job ad you've already found, when you want an email fast and cheaply.

PitchMe

PitchMe is a Chrome extension. On a job ad, it tailors your resume and gives you the hiring manager's email with an intro already written. You send it yourself. It says it works on LinkedIn, Indeed, Greenhouse, Lever and careers pages, "or any job site".

• Free: some credits, with no sign-up or card (it doesn't say how many). Paid: Unlimited at $19 a month, with a 3-day free trial.
• It offers a "5-Interview Guarantee": use it for 3 months, and if you don't get at least 5 interviews, you get your money back. Read their terms before you count on it (PitchMe).
• Good for: people who want the resume, the email and the message in one step.

Where they fall short

Both start from a job ad you've already found. By the time an ad is public, plenty of other people have found it too, and neither tool finds jobs for you. DearHiringManager doesn't list SEEK among the links it takes (PitchMe says it works on any job site), so check before you rely on it for SEEK jobs.

What Sidedoor does differently

Sidedoor works one step earlier: it finds the jobs and the people hiring, then leaves the contacting to you.

• Jobs that fit you, with who's hiring. Tell it the job you want and where. It finds the specialist recruiters in your field, checks their LinkedIn posts every day, and combines them with job listings in one feed. Each job shows the recruiter who posted it, or "Someone hiring" when the poster isn't a recruiter.
• Contact details people published themselves. When a recruiter put their email or phone in their own posts, Sidedoor shows it with a confidence label (high, medium or low). It doesn't guess addresses or buy them from a database.
• Job by link, for a job you found yourself. Paste a LinkedIn, SEEK, Greenhouse or Lever link, or paste the ad. It works out whether the job is hired in-house or through an agency, and suggests up to three likely hiring managers and up to three in-house recruiters, with the reasons and links to their LinkedIn profiles. It takes about 10–30 seconds and uses 3 credits.
• It never contacts anyone for you, and it doesn't need your LinkedIn login.

What it doesn't do: it won't give you a hiring manager's email address. If you need an email, pair it with one of the tools above.

Can you use them together?

Yes, and it's a sensible setup:

1. Use Sidedoor to find jobs that fit you and the person hiring for each one.
2. Message them on LinkedIn first: a connection request with a short note.
3. If they don't use LinkedIn much, look up their work email with a free plan (Hunter, Lusha, ContactOut or RocketReach). For a job ad you found elsewhere, DearHiringManager's free reveals are another option.

A short note is all you need (more templates in what to message a recruiter after applying):

Hi Priya, I saw you're hiring a payroll officer for the Brisbane team. I've spent four years running payroll for 600+ staff on Workday, most recently at [company]. I'd love a quick chat if you think it's a fit. Thanks for your time.

Price compared, like with like

For a three-month job hunt, on each tool's cheapest plan that covers it (prices checked 25 October 2026, in the currency each site shows):

Apollo and RocketReach are left out because their prices weren't shown on their pricing pages when we checked. Most of these tools also have free plans that are enough for a handful of lookups, and Sidedoor beta testers get their first month free.