Today's Theme: Sticks and Cover Letters

…No balls today.  Just sticks!

That’s a smile, folks, I promise.  He stopped chasing the tennis balls to pick up this stick and parade it around like a trophy.  Such a proud moment for him.

But enough about that.

Today I decided to write a small, organizational framework for writing Cover Letters in LaTeX.  The project, blandly named “cover-letter-framework,” can be found on my github page, here.  The goal of the project is to allow the generation of customized cover letters through the use of templates and configuration files.  It enables authors to re-use as much content as possible from different, but related, cover letters without resorting to repeated copy-paste.

Here is an example of a cover letter generated from the default configuration files included in the project.

At a minimum, the framework requires you to maintain three configurations with the following parameters: An author configuration Name Address Email Phone Signature A company configuration Name Address A job configuration Position Department Posting Location A custom letter body Through these three configurations, you can then use the framework to create letters for as many permutations of job listings at various companies as you please.  The custom job body variable (\vJobBody) can be used to reference generic, pre-typed sections of text or tailor the content of the letter’s body to your needs.

An advantage of the re-used templates and configuration also means that fixing mistakes or adding detail to shared configuration will automatically update the content of all referencing letters!  If used with the included Makefile, a nearly limitless amount of cover letters can be compiled and updated simultaneously with a single command, leaving you to focus on applying to the jobs you love rather than dreading writers block when it comes to the cover letters.

Give it a try!  What’s the worst that can happen?

From the Readers

\vWooleyFlowerBox

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