How to Approach Companies Directly Without Applying

At senior levels, the majority of roles are filled through retained search, referrals, and direct approaches. The estimates vary by sector, but the pattern is consistent: a significant proportion of the roles you want will never appear on a job board.

This is not a conspiracy. It is economics. Advertising a senior role publicly generates hundreds of applications, most of which are unqualified, and requires someone to process all of them. A retained search firm narrows the field to five or six candidates before the hiring manager sees a single CV. For a time-pressed CEO or board, the search firm route is faster and lower risk.

The implication for your job search is straightforward. If you are only applying to advertised roles, you are competing for the minority of the market that is visible, against the highest volume of applicants, using the least differentiated channel. That is not a strategy. It is a queue.

The alternative is to approach companies directly. It works. But only if you do it properly.

Why direct approaches work

A direct approach works because it solves a problem the hiring manager did not know they had.

Most companies do not start recruiting the moment they identify a need. There is a lag. A senior person leaves, and the leadership team discusses the replacement for two weeks before briefing HR. A new function is being considered, but nobody has written the job description yet. A PE-backed business is growing and the board has discussed hiring a Head of Commercial, but the CEO has not had time to engage a search firm.

A direct approach that arrives during this lag, from a candidate who has clearly researched the company and can articulate what they would bring, often bypasses the entire recruitment process. The hiring manager thinks "we were just talking about this." Your email goes from the inbox to the diary.

This is not the same as cold emailing your CV to five hundred companies. That is spam. A direct approach is targeted, researched, and specific to the company and the person receiving it.

Step 1: Build your target list

Start with twenty to thirty companies where the type of role you want is likely to exist.

Do not filter by "who is hiring." Filter by "where does my experience map?" You are looking for companies at the right stage, in the right sector, with the right scale, where someone with your background would add obvious value.

Use LinkedIn to search by sector, company size, location, and growth signals. Check company news for funding rounds, acquisitions, leadership changes, and expansion. A PE-backed business that just closed a new fund is about to invest, and investments need operational leadership. A company that just promoted its CFO to CEO now has an open CFO seat, whether or not it has been advertised yet.

AI tools are genuinely useful here. Ask Claude or ChatGPT to research a sector, identify the fastest-growing companies in a specific category, or summarise recent news about a target company. This is research, and AI does research well.

Your target list should include: the company name, what the company does, why you are relevant to them specifically, and who the hiring decision-maker is likely to be.

Step 2: Find the right person

The right person is almost never someone in HR or talent acquisition. They are involved later, once the decision to hire has been made. The person you want is the one who would make that decision: typically the person one level above the role you are targeting.

If you are targeting a Head of Finance role, the right person is the CFO. If you are targeting a Commercial Director role, it is the CEO or the MD. If you are targeting a VP of Operations, it is the COO or the CEO of a business that does not yet have a COO.

LinkedIn is the primary tool. Search the company page. Check the leadership section of the company website. Look at recent press coverage. In most cases, you can identify the right person in five to ten minutes.

If you cannot find a name, that is useful information too. It may mean the company is too large for a direct approach to land (at enterprise scale, direct emails to senior leadership rarely get through). Or it may mean the function you are targeting does not exist yet, which is actually a strong signal if your approach is about building something new.

Step 3: Research the company

This is the step that separates a direct approach from a cold email.

Before you write anything, spend thirty minutes understanding the company. What are they doing? What stage are they at? What challenges are likely given their sector and scale? What has changed recently?

Read their last annual report or investor update. Check Companies House for financial data. Read the CEO's most recent LinkedIn posts. Look at their job board to see what else they are hiring for, which tells you where the growth is.

The point of this research is not to demonstrate that you can use Google. It is to identify the specific angle your approach will take: the connection between what this company needs and what your experience provides.

Step 4: Write the email

The email is short. Five to seven sentences. It is not a cover letter. It is not an application. It is a message from one professional to another that says: I have looked at what you are building, I think my experience is relevant, and I would like to have a conversation.

The subject line matters. Keep it short and specific. "[Your name] / [Company name] / [Function]" works. "Application for potential role" does not. You are not applying. You are making an approach.

Do not attach your CV to the first email. The CV is for the second conversation, after they have expressed interest. The first email is about starting a dialogue, not about being evaluated.

Step 5: Follow up

Most direct approaches that generate a result do so on the follow-up, not the initial email. Decision-makers are busy. Your first email may land on a Tuesday afternoon when they have back-to-back meetings. They read it, think "interesting," and then forget.

Follow up once, five to seven working days later. Keep it shorter than the original. "I sent you a note last week about [specific thing]. If the timing is not right, I completely understand. But if it is worth a brief conversation, I am easy to reach."

That is it. One follow-up. If there is no response to the follow-up, move on. Two emails is professional. Three is pushy. Five is a problem.

What makes this work, and what makes it fail

The direct approach works when three things are true. Your positioning is clear enough that a hiring manager can see in fifteen seconds what you bring. Your research is specific enough that the email feels tailored, not mass-produced. And your ask is low enough in commitment that it is easier to say yes than to say no.

It fails when any of these are missing. A direct email from someone whose positioning is vague reads as "I am looking for a job and I found your name on LinkedIn." A direct email with no company-specific research reads as a mail merge. A direct email that attaches a CV and asks to be considered for vacancies reads as an application, not an approach. The hiring manager sends it to HR, and it enters the same queue you were trying to avoid.

The most common failure I see is the positioning gap. The candidate's email is well written and well researched, but the underlying positioning is unclear. The hiring manager reads it and thinks "what exactly would this person do here?" That question should be answered in the first two sentences.

This is why the direct approach strategy depends on getting the CV and positioning right before you send a single email. The approach is the delivery mechanism. The positioning is the product.

Getting the positioning right first

The direct approach is the most effective job search channel available to senior professionals. But it only works if the person behind it is clearly positioned.

If your CV does not answer the question "what is this person for?" in the first ten seconds, the direct approach email will not land. The research will be wasted. The follow-up will not convert. Because the hiring manager who clicks through to your LinkedIn or asks for your CV will hit the same positioning gap that would have filtered you out of the advertised route.

The CV Intelligence Report is designed to close that gap before you approach anyone. I read your CV the way a hiring manager would. I tell you what it communicates, where the positioning is strong, where it is weak, and what needs to change. Two CVs tailored to your target roles, a LinkedIn assessment, and the reasoning behind every change.

Start with the positioning. The approach works from there.