Bragging Rights

Cover letters have always been an issue with me. While I spend most of my day wracking my brain for viable experience for my resume, the cover letter poses more of a problem. To be honest, I have trouble both sucking up to people and bragging about myself in the same few paragraphs. It seems contradictory; why tell people you can type 90 words a minute (I can almost do that, w00t) and have a thorough understanding of Microsoft Office and have this many references, then continue on to explain that you're a "fast learner"? If that wasn't the case, then you obviously wouldn't have the skills you supplied.

To me, the resume seems self-explanatory and should not require a cliff notes version; however, employers must be given an even longer list of skills in order to fully understand the competency of their possible future employees. When I first started applying for internships a couple years back, my father gave me a guide to writing a cover letter and I did so with all the internships I applied to. I continued that in January when I had to apply for paid employment and a lot of my friends were asking me why I was doing it. Why not just send the resume and wait, they asked. Well, my good friends, a lot of companies that post on monster or careerbuilder sort through random sendings of resumes and need a cover letter for validation of existence. No one wants to hire a computer robot sending fake resumes...or maybe they do, which is why no one has asked me on an interview yet...