Building a Deadline Reminder for Government Job Forms with Google Calendar and a CSV

Applying to several government recruitments at once means juggling last dates, fee deadlines, admit card weeks and exam days. I built a tiny workflow that turns a CSV into calendar reminders. No server, no paid tools.

The CSV

exam,event,date
SSC CGL,Last date to apply,2026-11-14
SSC CGL,Fee payment closes,2026-11-15
RRB NTPC,Admit card expected,2026-12-02

Fill it from the official notices. I copy new rows whenever a notice appears on a tracker like the latest government jobs page on Govtpvt.

Convert to ICS with Python

import csv
from datetime import datetime

lines = ["BEGIN:VCALENDAR", "VERSION:2.0"]
with open("deadlines.csv") as f:
    for row in csv.DictReader(f):
        d = datetime.strptime(row["date"], "%Y-%m-%d").strftime("%Y%m%d")
        lines += ["BEGIN:VEVENT", f"DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:{d}",
                  f"SUMMARY:{row['exam']} - {row['event']}",
                  "BEGIN:VALARM", "TRIGGER:-P2D", "ACTION:DISPLAY",
                  "DESCRIPTION:Reminder", "END:VALARM", "END:VEVENT"]
lines.append("END:VCALENDAR")
open("deadlines.ics", "w").write("\n".join(lines))

Import deadlines.ics into Google Calendar. Each event gets an alert two days early.

Why two days

Payment gateways and portals slow down near deadlines. Two days of buffer has saved me more than once.

If you are building something similar, Govtpvt is a handy source for dates, since it lists notices, admit cards and results in one place.