In tough job markets, submitting 100 résumés before getting hired is not uncommon. Of possible interest is my Creating Catchy Cover Letters blog post, which uses my Markdown editor, KeenWrite (https://keenwrite.com), to create PDF files styled to match a company's branding:
https://keenwrite.com/blog/2025/10/15/creating-catchy-cover-...
A handful of prospective managers told me that my cover letter stood out among hundreds of applicants.
Here's the full shell script I used to build cover letters (you'll need to point "theme dir" to the directory where the cover letter theme---aspiros---is found). With this script, creating a cover letter went from about 20 minutes down to 5. If you have any troubles getting it to work, contact me via https://whitemagicsoftware.com/.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# This script builds a cover letter based on a company's branding. The
# parameters include:
#
# $1 -- The company name as a directory, containing colours and logo.
# $2 -- The company name (normal case).
# $3 -- The company role (job title).
# $4 -- The relative path to the cover letter to typeset.
#
# Example:
#
# ./build.sh corp Corporation 'Job Title' template/cover-letter.md
readonly SCRIPT_SRC="$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[${#BASH_SOURCE[@]} - 1]}")"
readonly SCRIPT_DIR="$(cd "${SCRIPT_SRC}" >/dev/null 2>&1 && pwd)"
readonly COMPANY_DIR="${1:-template}"
readonly COMPANY_NAME="${2:-Template}"
readonly COMPANY_ROLE="${3:-Job Title}"
readonly PATH_COVER_LETTER="${4:-climate/cover-letter.md}"
readonly EMPLOYEE_NAME="${5:-Your Name}"
readonly EMPLOYEE_ROLE="${6:-Your Role}"
read -r COLOUR_FG COLOUR_BG COLOUR_AC < "$COMPANY_DIR/colours.txt"
readonly COLOUR_FG COLOUR_BG COLOUR_AC
magick \
signature-black.png \
-alpha extract \
-background "#${COLOUR_AC}" \
-alpha shape \
-define png:color-type=6 \
signature.png
rm -f ${HOME}/.local/share/keenwrite/logo_svg_*.pdf
keenwrite.bin \
-i "${PATH_COVER_LETTER}" \
-o cover-letter.pdf \
--set=employer.company.name="${COMPANY_NAME}" \
--set=employer.position.role="${COMPANY_ROLE}" \
--set=employee.name="${EMPLOYEE_NAME}" \
--set=employee.role="${EMPLOYEE_ROLE}" \
--set=employee.contact.phone="555-1212" \
--set=employee.contact.email="email@hostname" \
--set=employee.portfolio.url="gitlab.com/YourName" \
--set=employee.address.line.1="address 1" \
--set=employee.address.line.2="city, province" \
--set=employee.address.line.3="postal code" \
--metadata="foreground=${COLOUR_FG}" \
--metadata="background=${COLOUR_BG}" \
--metadata="accent=${COLOUR_AC}" \
--image-dir="${SCRIPT_DIR}/${COMPANY_DIR}" \
--theme-dir="${HOME}/dev/java/keenwrite/themes/aspiros"
exiftool \
-overwrite_original_in_place \
-Title="${EMPLOYEE_NAME}" \
-Author="${EMPLOYEE_NAME}" \
cover-letter.pdf