Not everyone agrees that a cover letter is a necessary item in today’s electronic bastion of communication. I disagree.  Recently, we posted an ad for interns ( http://careereco.com/forums/174.aspx ) to assist us at CareerEco in a variety of tasks.   I can tell you from a hiring perspective that those resumes that were accompanied by a well-written cover letter explaining why they were interested in the internship stood out significantly.  The explanation of the candidate’s interest gave tremendous insight into why the individual would consider working on an unpaid internship program and why they were interested in an eco-oriented company.  The personal touch that the cover letter offered created a great insight as to why we would want to learn more about that person.  Most of those candidates who took the time to write a cover letter about why they were a good fit for this project received an immediate follow-up from us.  As a writer of some 7,000 resumes in my life, I can only say that I will never stop being amazed at the power of the written word to persuade people to act.  Make sure you capitalize on the opportunity to use the cover letter as a persuasive document on your behalf.  A cover letter is worth the time it takes to write and as fewer and fewer people offer this personalized correspondence, the more you distinguish your credentials from the endless pool of applicants that reside in email purgatory, aka unread inbox.