Yes — and it is one of the few things that reliably moves an application. The reason people hesitate is that doing it badly is genuinely worse than not doing it.
A popular role draws hundreds of applications through a system designed to filter them. A direct note arrives outside that system, from a person who has evidently done some thinking. Hiring managers are not besieged by these — most candidates never send one — so the bar to standing out is far lower than the effort suggests.
An obviously templated message, a long one, an aggressive one, or one that asks the reader to work out why you are relevant. Contacting several people at the same company about the same role also backfires — they talk to each other, and it reads as scattergun rather than keen.
A connection request with a note works and is lower friction, but it competes with recruiter spam in the same inbox and is easy to postpone. Email is less crowded for a hiring manager than their LinkedIn requests are. Either is fine; what matters is that it is short, specific, and clearly written for this role.
Drafted from your history and the role, and yours to edit before it goes.
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