求职信失宠之谜

    求职信该谢幕了吗？

    求职信的境遇如此糟糕，罗森堡已经建议客户完全放弃求职信，转而专注于定制简历。他说：“在现在的招聘流程下，申请人应该针对每个工作机会、每家公司、每位招聘经理都量身定做一份简历。”

    我们当然不能责备应聘者按牌理出牌，但我们是不是已经做好了准备，完全抛弃简历的这位老朋友呢？我们还是需要一个自我介绍推销长处的工具。几个世纪以来，我们一直都是这么干的。就连达芬奇都曾使用某种形式的求职信向米兰公爵推销自己的服务。虽然人们将它称为史上第一份简历，但它其实更像是一封求职信，或者可以说是自我介绍信。履历和简历体现的是求职者工作技能和成就的具体细节，很可能就是从求职信演化过来的。

    简历分析网站RezScore的共同创始人肖恩•温伯格指出，虽然很难确定求职信和简历什么时候开始分离，但大概的时间是在20世纪早期。“这是一个缓慢演化的过程。我们现在所知的求职信是和简历平行发展起来的。”（该公司发布了一幅精彩的介绍简历历史的信息图表）。

    求职信无能为力

    不需要高水平口头和书面语言能力的职位不会十分重视求职信。在线学习公司Knewton的首席运营官戴维•刘负责公司的招聘战略。他不看重求职信：“现在我们招聘工程师和商务人员的比例是20:1。招聘软件开发和工程人员时，我们不在乎你文笔有多好。我们只看重你的编程和系统设计能力。”

    刘说他们通过察看作品集、编程测试和对话来了解申请人，了解他们的实际工作成果。“除非求职信长达8页，否则根本不可能了解到足够多的细节。”

    刘认为，通过推荐人或其他方式联系雇主的简历会比任何求职信都好。“闭着眼发送求职信绝对过时了，”他说。“得想法认识公司内部人员，找到见面机会。总有办法找到谁在那里工作，打听到他们的年资和工作职位。”

    Is it curtains for the cover letter?

    Things have gotten so bad for the cover letter that Rosenberg has started advising clients to put their effort into customizing their resumes and forget the cover letter entirely. "The process is set up to reward candidates that heavily customize their resumes for each individual opportunity, company, and hiring manager," he says.

    While you can't blame candidates for playing into the system, are we really prepared to abandon the resume's longtime companion altogether? We'll always need a tool to introduce ourselves and sell folks on our best qualities. We've been doing it for centuries. Even Leonardo da Vinci used a cover letter of sorts to pitch his services to the Duke of Milan. Although this has been called the first resume, it's really more of a cover letter, or what probably would have been referred to as a letter of introduction. It's likely that the curriculum vitae (CV) and resume evolved from the cover letter as a more nuts and bolts presentation of a candidate's skills and accomplishments.

    It's hard to say when the cover letter and resume emerged as separate entities, says Sean Weinberg, co-founder of RezScore, an online resume analyzer, but he places it somewhere in the early twentieth century. "It's been a slow evolution. The cover letter as we know it has evolved in parallel with the resume." (His company published a nifty infographic on the history of the resume.).

    When a letter just doesn't cut it

    Job openings that don't require a high level of verbal and written skills place less emphasis on the cover letter. As COO of Knewton, an online learning company, David Liu oversees the company's recruiting strategy, and he does not put much stock in the cover letter. "We're hiring engineers to business people 20-to-one right now. When we're looking for people in the areas of software development and engineering, we're not really looking to see how well you write prose. We're looking to see how well you code and how well you can design a system."

    Liu says they get to know candidates by looking at their portfolios, through coding tests, and in conversations so that they can understand what they've actually accomplished. "With cover letters, you can't really get into a lot of detail without it getting blown into an eight-page document."

    Liu argues that a resume with a referral or approaching employers through another context would work better than any cover letter. "Just sending in a blind cover letter is absolutely dated," he says. "You need to figure out a way to identify with the folks that are in those companies. There are meetups. There are ways to find out who's working there, for how long, and what they do."