????求職信該謝幕了嗎？

????求職信的境遇如此糟糕，羅森堡已經建議客戶完全放棄求職信，轉而專注于定制簡歷。他說：“在現在的招聘流程下，申請人應該針對每個工作機會、每家公司、每位招聘經理都量身定做一份簡歷。”

????我們當然不能責備應聘者按牌理出牌，但我們是不是已經做好了準備，完全拋棄簡歷的這位老朋友呢？我們還是需要一個自我介紹推銷長處的工具。幾個世紀以來，我們一直都是這么干的。就連達芬奇都曾使用某種形式的求職信向米蘭公爵推銷自己的服務。雖然人們將它稱為史上第一份簡歷，但它其實更像是一封求職信，或者可以說是自我介紹信。履歷和簡歷體現的是求職者工作技能和成就的具體細節，很可能就是從求職信演化過來的。

????簡歷分析網站RezScore的共同創始人肖恩?溫伯格指出，雖然很難確定求職信和簡歷什么時候開始分離，但大概的時間是在20世紀早期。“這是一個緩慢演化的過程。我們現在所知的求職信是和簡歷平行發展起來的。”（該公司發布了一幅精彩的介紹簡歷歷史的信息圖表）。

????求職信無能為力

????不需要高水平口頭和書面語言能力的職位不會十分重視求職信。在線學習公司Knewton的首席運營官戴維?劉負責公司的招聘戰略。他不看重求職信：“現在我們招聘工程師和商務人員的比例是20:1。招聘軟件開發和工程人員時，我們不在乎你文筆有多好。我們只看重你的編程和系統設計能力。”

????劉說他們通過察看作品集、編程測試和對話來了解申請人，了解他們的實際工作成果。“除非求職信長達8頁，否則根本不可能了解到足夠多的細節。”

????劉認為，通過推薦人或其他方式聯系雇主的簡歷會比任何求職信都好。“閉著眼發送求職信絕對過時了，”他說。“得想法認識公司內部人員，找到見面機會。總有辦法找到誰在那里工作，打聽到他們的年資和工作職位。”

????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."