cover-letter-template-generator

Problem: Creating unique cover letters that are focused on a specific company and why you like them/how you are relevant to that company. I know for me it takes about 10 mins or longer to create unique cover for every job. 40 jobs * 10 mins = 400 mins (minimum) per week. 1200 Mins per month. This is a lot of time.

Problem 2: I am required to enter the jobs that I apply to, into a secondary application. To apply to 20 jobs it takes a minute more of my time, times that by 2-3 times per week (3 mins) for a month (12 mins of time wasted).

Solution: This application is a program that is oriented around creating fully dynamic and customized cover letters with more ease. Ultimately saving people a siginificant amount of time.

Feedback --> If you have any feedback please feel free to reach out to me by email Jsavett@gmail.com

Make Sure All Commands Below Are Done At The Root Level.

Techonolgies needed:

• Python:
  • Installing python on windows
  • Installing python on mac
  • Installing python using homebrew
• Python Virtual Environment:
  • Installing Virtual Environment
• Django:
  • Installing Django on windows
  • Installing Django
• Selenium for testing:
  • Installing Selenium

Additional Technologies Used

• UrlLib3
• RandomWords
• PhoneField
• MultiSelectField

Setup Steps

I am assuming that you have Brew installed for the following code. If you do not, please copy this ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" into your terminal.

• Step 1: If there is a word in paranthesis next to your name in terminal, i.e (venv) X's-Macbook-pro, then you are in the virtual environment. This is good.

  • 1a: If you don't have that, please follow this step. In your terminal, please run pip install virtualenv. I am following steps from installing venv
  • 1b:If you have a project in a directory called my-project you can set up virtualenv for that project by running: run cd my-project/virtualenv venv. If you want your virtualenv to also inherit globally installed packages run: virtualenv venv --system-site-packages
  • 1c: Important These commands create a venv/ directory in your project where all dependencies are installed. You need to activate it first though (in every terminal instance where you are working on your project): source venv/bin/activate

• Step 2: If you are inside the virtual environment, see step one to determine if you are. In your terminal run pip install -r requirements.txt. This will run the requirements.txt file that will download all third-party necessary files and also start the virtual environment for you which is required as mentioned below. Very Important --> Run django-admin flush and then accept.

  It will get installed in the venv/ folder, and not conflict with other projects.To leave the virtual environment run: deactivate

  Optional: To make it easier to work on multiple projects that has separate environments you can install virtualenvwrapper. It's an extension to virtualenv and makes it easier to create and delete virtual environments without creating dependency conflicts.

  To install virtualenvwrapper run: pip install virtualenvwrapper

STARTING VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT: source venv/bin/activate

It is important to start the virtual environment and doing the above code will do so.

Run: Python3 manage.py runserver

This will start the server running on http://localhost:3000/. If you are having issues with running the above command using Python3, try using Python manage.py runserver.

If your preference for locally running the server is http://localhost:8000/, please run Python3 manage.py runserver 8000 or Python manage.py runserver 8000

Creating a SuperUser

For this system it is important to create a superuser. To do so go click here (documentation) or follow the below steps: * run python manage.py createsuperuser or python3 manage.py createsuperuser in your terminal that is at the top folder level (CoverLetterGenerator) of the project. * Follow prompts in the terminal. Access to SuperUser To access the superuser you'll have to go to http://localhost:3000/admin or http://localhost:8000/admin and log in. At this point you can edit or delete any information that is in the system.

Create a User

On the homepage click the User Form to create.

For simplicity the last user you create will be the one that the system uses for the cover-letter template. You have the option to change it on the form itself if you wish.

Delete The test user that currently exists once you have completed your user information.

Testing

Important: If you don't want to use chrome as your main server then you'll need to move to change two files - coverLetters/tests_submit_to_interviewdb.py and coverLetters/tests.py. In the def setup(self): function change the webdriver. to what you want it to be -> options.

Whatever driver you choose you'll want to drag the driver to the venv/bin/ path.

---

• First make sure you are in the virtual environment to start the test. In your terminal it should show (venv) YourNameHere:ProjectName.
• Next in your terminal make sure you are at the root level.
• run: python manage.py test This will run through an assortment of tests such as making sure the back buttons are present on each back except for admin. Making sure that each form field is working, and the different templates are valid.

If you change the model, you will also need to change these tests.

Submitting to InterviewDB

If you wish to submit to interview DB then you'll need to make a couple additions and changes.

• Step 1: Add a file called passwords.py under the coverLetters folder. The pathway should look like coverLetters/passwords.py.
• Step 2: Add two functions:
  • def github_password(): return 'your-github-password'
  • def github_login(): return 'your-github-username'

Don't Wish to Submit to InterviewDB:

• Go to coverLetters/tests_submit_to_interviewdb.py and comment/hash out the entire test.

Running the test: python manage.py test

Editing Cover Letter

CoverLetterGenerator/coverLetters/templates/coverletters/cover-letter.html

Cover Letter Template

If you want a different pre-filled sections (i.e Top Skills is filled with "Dynamic and accomplished Software Engineer with experience and expertise in") you can go to coverLetters/models.py and under that field in the Job Model you can either add or change the field default="x".

Currently the top_skills field has a default value of "Dynamic and accomplished Software Engineer with experience and expertise in". Which is based off the template I have in there.

Don't worry about the bullet_point_one, etc. They wont be added into the cover letter unless you wish it to be so.

All Job Detail

CoverLetterGenerator/coverLetters/templates/jobs

This is the location of the code which holds the general information for the cover letter, and then the cover letter itself.

CoverLetterGenerator/coverLetters/templates/all-jobs

This is a simple for loop which shows all jobs that have templates and exist in your database.

Filling Out Form

Each field of the form:

Template choices: - This is where you select which version of the template you wish to populate. This is pre-populated with cover-letter.html or otherwise known as "Standard Cover Letter".

Choice of user: - ID 2 - Your User Info - date created: 2020-09-03 - This is whatever user information you provided that will populate the form.

Job posting website: - Linkedin - Put here the website to which you gathered the information from.This is so that it can say "I saw your job posting from x"

Company: - The name of the company you are applying to.

Position title: - Title of the position you are applying to.

City: - What city is the job in? This is really just for your records.

Link: - This is the link of the job posting so that you can go back to it.

Recruiter: - If you have a recruiters name, then put it here.The recruiters name will replace the generic greeting.

Description: - Job description for your records.

Pre bullet point paragraph one: - If you want to have a paragraph before the bullet points.

Pre bullet point paragraph two: - If you want to have a second paragraph before the bullet points.

Top skills: - These are your top skills that are relevant to the job. This is prefilled in with "Dynamic and accomplished Software Engineer with experience and expertise in x".

Bullet point x: - These are the additional reasons why you are good for this position. There are eight fields.

Post bullet point paragraph one: - If you want to have a paragraph post the bullet points.

Post bullet point paragraph two: - If you want to have a second paragraph post the bullet points.

Duplicates

To resolve the issue of potentially putting duplicate information into the database. I used unique_together which is a meta class to models. See Below: class Meta: unique_together = ('link', 'template_choices', 'position_title')

To explain what this little piece of code is doing, it is looking at each form submitted to make sure that there is a unique combination of link, template choice, and position title. I choose these three for a specific reason:

• The link generated by a job is typically unique to that single job, so therefore that alone should solve for uniqueness.
• I added in template choices so that you can have multiple cover letters for one job as long as they are different templates.
• Position_title was added in to create one last uniqueness check.

Future Features

Front-end My goal is a cleaner UI that allows my website to be used by the masses to help everyone generate unique cover letters. Even create their own templates from the frontend.

Users With the creation of the frontend, I want each user to be able to create a unique profile so that they can save their data.