Job Market Tracker

A simple job application tracker for the Economics Job Market.

What is it?

This is a small package to manage applications for the job market. It does the following things:

• Manages a list of postings viewed, under consideration, and ignored.
• Allows you to manage deadlines for applications so that you don't miss anything important
• Allows you to manage updates to old postings
• Detects which postings are new and which ones you've already seen
• Manages application status and letters received
• Allows you to customize posting details, take notes, and organize them according to custom columns
• Automates the creation of application folders by copying a default one

What this currently doesnt do:

• It won't download the posting files for you (or scrape anything)
• It doesn't allow you to filter postings before reviewing one by one (you can do this in the spreadsheets before inputing it to this app)
• For now, it doesn't provide any management of interviewes.

Preview

Installation (updated)

1. Clone this repository to your local computer

2. Install Anaconda or Miniconda

3. Create a new environment by conda with Python 3.9 by running

conda create -n jmt python=3.9

4. Activate the environment

conda activate jmt

5. Install the required packages

pip install -r pip-requirements.txt

conda install pandas=1.3.1 numpy=1.21.1 lxml=4.6.3 openpyxl=3.0.7

6. Locate the repository in your terminal and run

chmod +x start.sh

7. Run the start.sh script

./start.sh

The GUI should open up.

Note, you will need to register PySimpleGUI for the first time you run the script. This is a one-time operation. Then you can start the app by running

./start.sh

Quick Start

1. Go to "update postings" and download the AEA and EJM files to your local computer. For the AEA download the native XLS and for the EJM download in CSV. This system does not provide any type of filtering, so if you want to exclude rows, you should do so manually in the XLS/CSV files. Once you're ready, set the location of each file in the finder, and click the update. The system will review each posting in each file and evaluate whether there are new postings or updates to existing ones. New postings will be added to your local new-posting list, while updates will be added to your pending update review list.

2. To manage new postings, go to "Review new postings" This will show each posting, one by one, allowing you to classify each as interested, maybe interested, or ignore. You can also see the details of postings or go directly to the website.

3. To manage updates, go to "Manage updates". The system will list all new collected updates and will allow you to accept or reject each update for each posting.

4. To see your application deadline go to "View deadlines" there you will find all the postings you marked as interested or maybes. Note that many postings have incorrect deadline in AEA and EJM. Often the correct deadline is in the full text. So it is recommended that you review each deadline (particularly those that show up as very far in the future). The system allows you to modify the deadline of each interested posting manually at this stage.

Customizing Inputs and Theme

Tired of the retro wave look of the system? checkout custom_settings.py to change the color theme.

Also, the system allows adding custom sources beyond AEA, EJM, and AJO. Sources are added as dictionaries to the list variables input_option_settings in custom_settings.py. Each source is a dictionary that must specify a number of mandatory keys, including a url for the source, the name of the source, and a function to read the data. See custom_settings.py for further details and examples.

Help!

Check the help button in the GUI for further instructions on how to use this app. Any issues, submit them through the issue tracker here on github.

Contributing

To contribute to this effort please submit a pull request or contact me directly.