Generate Cover Letters and Packages for Finance Job Market Application

Pingle Wang
Last updated on 2 min read
Code

Job market application can be exhausting. This post helps auto-generate cover letters and organize packages for finance job market application.

Download the package here

Below is a list of typical job postings:

  1. AFA job postings
  2. SSRN job postings
  3. EconJobMarket

When I was on the market, I created a spreadsheet with the following columns:

  • University: the name of university
  • Department: the name of business school or department
  • Shortcut: the identifier for application
  • Contact: the name of contact for job posting (optional)
  • Address: the address of department
  • Method: Either "Email" or "Online"
  • Url: the application system url
  • Letterlink: the address to send letters, empty if it's the same as Url
  • RS: value 1 if the school asks for research statement, 0 otherwise
  • Transcript: value 1 if the school asks for transcript
  • Onefile: value 1 if the school asks to send everything in one file
  • Receive: value 1 if the application has been sent, 0 otherwise
  • Deadline: deadline of application

I have also provided a demo spreadsheet "School_to_Apply.xlsx" in the zip file.

After gathering info for applications, we can run scripts to automatically generate cover letters and school packages.

  1. Run "generate_school_pm.py": I modified the script created by Matthew Miller. This script extracts entries in "School_to_Apply.xlsx" and outputs a file "Schools.pm", which is used for generating cover letters and packages. Do not modify "pre_Schools.pm" in the package.
  2. Run "generate_cover_letters.pl": The Perl script automatically generates the tex file of cover letters for each school entry in your spreadsheet, compiles the tex file, and output pdf file. You will need to replace the following fields:
    • replace "First Last" to your name;
    • replace "XXX Street", "University of YYY", "City, State zip" to your school address;
    • replace "123-456-7890" to your phone number;
    • replace "youremail\@xyz.com" to your email address, keep "\" before the "@" symbol;
    • replace "yourwebsite.com" to your website;
    • replace "./figures/your_signature.png" to your signature path;
    • replace "./figures/your_school_logo.png" to your school logo path;
    • modify the main body of the cover letter (line 183-192).
    • What you get: a sub-folder "cover_letters" containing cover letters for each school
  3. Run "generate_packages.py": A script to generate school packages. It will need the following file path:
    • paths of your papers ("paper0" is your jmp)
    • paths of your research statement, teaching statement, list of references, and transcript

Good luck!

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