[HN Gopher] Make a Resume in LaTeX
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Make a Resume in LaTeX
        
       Author : penguincodes
       Score  : 170 points
       Date   : 2023-01-24 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (drshika.me)
 (TXT) w3m dump (drshika.me)
        
       | raegis wrote:
       | I first used LaTeX 30 years ago, and used it up until I needed to
       | write a resume for a real job. I don't remember the particular
       | style I used, but I was unsuccessful in getting a pleasing look
       | for my tastes. I switched to plain TeX and have not looked back.
       | Most resumes are just plain text with special fonts, horizontal
       | rules, and custom spacing. You can do all of this with TeX
       | primitives in a short period. I wasted hours over several days
       | trying to figure this out with LaTeX.
        
       | nbbaier wrote:
       | This is a great guide! Well done.
        
       | 1MachineElf wrote:
       | Got my first InfoSec job 10 years ago with a resume coded in
       | LaTeX.
        
       | rajman187 wrote:
       | I was editing my resume in latex for a long time, then for no
       | particular reason decided to change the workflow such that I
       | could just write it in markdown and use emacs org-mode to
       | autogenerate an intermediate latex, associate the citations, and
       | publish a pdf. I find markdown is a lot simpler and with a
       | template can create as flexible a design as I could with latex.
        
       | Keyframe wrote:
       | How about a book?
        
       | kemiller2002 wrote:
       | Every few years I say to myself, "This is the way to go. I want
       | my resume to be programmable and data driven." I'm not great at
       | LaTeX now, and I was only ever ok. After getting into it, I've
       | never seen a benefit from it after trying to do it. Learning all
       | the esoteric rules to make LaTeX work only for that, is just too
       | high of a hill to climb for that alone. I want it to be
       | different, but for me, it's not.
        
         | pydry wrote:
         | I've gone through a similar thing. I like the principles behind
         | latex but it's really rough around the edges (in ways that are
         | baked in and will doubtless never be fixed).
         | 
         | The error messages given on invalid markup in particular are
         | atrocious.
        
         | luisegr wrote:
         | I wanted to have something like that too, but end up building
         | my resume as a JSON file, and generating an HTML template that
         | can be designed with help of css, it's really fast to add
         | things to it or update the style, I'm thinking on publishing it
         | on github once I clean up the code
        
         | littlelady wrote:
         | In my opinion, LaTeX is useful for typesetting (1) unwieldy
         | documents (2) using as a template for documents you write often
         | and scripting it.
         | 
         | (1) By unwieldy I mean a book or academic writing. Typesetting
         | a thesis or a book is "easy" to do with LaTeX, especially if
         | that document contains a lot of acronyms, glossaries, figures,
         | cross-references, bibliography, etc... there are lots of great
         | templates out there for theses and books; creating one from
         | scratch is more often than not, overkill.
         | 
         | (2) One use case of what I mean here is document generation,
         | say you have a table of employee names, phone numbers, email
         | addresses. You can easily generate new business cards for all
         | of your employees for the printers by creating a script to do
         | so. Though, the initial investment may only be worth it for a
         | larger amount of data.
         | 
         | A resume is mostly about _design_ and is not altered with the
         | frequency that would make typesetting in LaTeX interesting for
         | anything other than curiosity.
         | 
         | Also, moderncv produces enormous files. I agree that LaTeX is
         | not suited to every task.
        
         | anifru wrote:
         | I had the same experience using LaTeX. I manage my resume un
         | Google Docs now
        
       | alibrarydweller wrote:
       | One great benefit that she doesn't touch on is LaTeX makes for a
       | great on-ramp to generating resumes programmatically. I like to
       | use different emails for different services
       | (service@mydomain.com), especially when data is being hoovered
       | into HR systems. Building a pdf at the command line made it easy
       | to create a one-line command (via makefile) that generates a
       | small png with the desired email and insert it into the resume
       | with 0 effort or fuss.
        
         | PartiallyTyped wrote:
         | I found that my primary email address has been "leaked" during
         | my first job hunt, and ever since I have received countless
         | spam. This is a great idea and I plan on using it from now on.
         | 
         | I used makefiles for different kinds of jobs to put emphasis on
         | different aspects of the things i have done, and it works quite
         | well!
        
       | stevezsa8 wrote:
       | I used LaTeX for building my resume around 20 years ago.
       | 
       | I liked having a script that pulled a bunch of LaTeX files and
       | push out a couple different versions of my resume. I had one pdf
       | with my personal details included, and another without etc.
       | 
       | Eventually I went back to a simple Google doc because it was so
       | much easier to quickly change the style. And it looked nicer.
        
       | UniverseHacker wrote:
       | When I'm hiring for a technical position, good LaTeX typesetting
       | in a resume often means more than the details in the resume
       | itself. It demonstrates technical competence, attention to
       | detail, a sense of aesthetics, a real passion for learning new
       | technical skills (as learning LaTeX is almost never necessary in
       | a career), and is something people trying to fake technical
       | qualifications wouldn't even think of.
        
         | azalemeth wrote:
         | I completely agree with this. Forget subconscious bias: if I'm
         | after a physicist, LaTeX is expected and its absence a worry.
        
       | radiator wrote:
       | I used to keep my CV in LaTeX as well using some ready-made cls
       | but I wanted to better control the typesetting and I switched to
       | troff instead.
        
         | nequo wrote:
         | What kinds of things are you doing with the typesetting in
         | troff that you didn't do in LaTeX?
        
           | radiator wrote:
           | An one-page, two-column document, where every vertical and
           | horizontal spacing is manually adjusted at a low level. The
           | placement of the photograph, the introduction, a slightly
           | altered font for highlighting technical terms, need only be
           | made one time so that it is simpler than using someone else's
           | class and trying to bend it.
        
       | hazrmard wrote:
       | I've read that LaTeX resumes may give automated Applicant
       | Tracking Systems trouble. Likely because ATSs' parsing ability
       | caters to the majority of document formats, like PDFs made in MS
       | Word. Is there any truth to that? Is a well-formatted, single
       | column, Word file converted to PDF the best option for applying
       | online?
       | 
       | (I ask as someone who, until last month, kept a LaTex resume.)
        
       | elashri wrote:
       | I have unpopular opinion. I find writing in LaTeX is much simpler
       | that anything else (well may except markdown in many cases). I
       | always hated Microsoft Word and me having to think how to format
       | words as I type. Probably this problem is the same with latex but
       | for me having to deal with opening words files with a different
       | format that will change from version to other. And if there are
       | some macros or non-standard fonts used this is a hassle. In
       | contrast, when writing in latex I consider my writing as plain
       | text for most part and then It will depend on how I will format
       | them. I don't usually need to modify anything and if I need to
       | modify how a particular words appears then I will consider just
       | define some `\newcommand{}{}` and just replace the word with
       | `{}`. Overleaf also makes things easier and I can access it
       | everywhere (I used to self-host a overleaf CE but ditched it for
       | overleaf.com when CERN gave professional licenses).
       | 
       | Also, probably this is a biased opinion because of the time and
       | ready macros and styles I developed and tweaked over time that
       | serve almost everything I type. But I find LaTeX superior. More
       | related, I keep my resume updated in LaTeX on GitHub repository
       | with versioning (actually overleaf professional account gives you
       | this versioning option also) and it is much easier to do quick
       | edits to add a new conference/workshop. And a GitHub action will
       | build the PDF and add a new release with the commits as change
       | log. This is a simple system that takes sometime to put together
       | but will make keeping your resume a much easier and organized and
       | you can keep track of changes.
        
         | rowanG077 wrote:
         | I think writing markdown and restructured text is simpler. But
         | LaTeX still beats out word hard. It's not even a contest imo.
        
         | jofer wrote:
         | I completely agree in general, and my resume is in latex along
         | with my papers/etc.
         | 
         | However, I'd argue that industry-focused resumes are often a
         | poor fit for latex. For an academic CV where going an extra
         | page when you add a new detail is no big deal, latex is
         | perfect. For a business resume, where one face of one page is
         | the absolute most allowable and you're trying to keep content
         | on one page, it gets rough.
         | 
         | I'm not sure it's worse than using other things, but "keep the
         | layout on one page hacks" get pretty messy pretty quick in
         | latex.
        
           | irrational wrote:
           | What kind of business only allows one page resumes? I look at
           | resumes all the time and I think the only time I ever saw a
           | one page resume was for an internship.
        
             | cozzyd wrote:
             | Not really the same thing but biosketches for NSF/NASA
             | grants are often one page.
        
             | jofer wrote:
             | It's pretty industry specific, but at least in mine, 2
             | pages is a more or less immediate disqualification.
             | 
             | You're expected to have a substantial publication history,
             | but including that on a resume will get it thrown in the
             | trash immediately.
             | 
             | Including your full work history will also get it thrown
             | away quickly. Ditto with full education. Last degree only.
             | A fair bit of detail from your most recent 2-ish jobs. Key
             | certifications. Nothing else.
        
           | dietrichepp wrote:
           | One-page-only is great for new grads and people with a few
           | years of experience.
           | 
           | I'd expect someone with 10+ years of experience to use a
           | second page. My resume is about a page and a half. Old (but
           | relevant!) job experience has already been cut down to a
           | single-line description for each job. At some point, there's
           | just too much content for one page, even if you ruthlessly
           | edit your resume down and just give the most essential
           | details.
        
             | yakubin wrote:
             | 10 years of experience is what, 2-3 jobs? Easy to fit on
             | one page. Just adjust the font size and padding between
             | sections from the time you applied when you didn't have any
             | experience and needed to pad your resume.
        
               | dietrichepp wrote:
               | I suppose it could just be 2-3 jobs and fit in one page.
               | But 4 jobs is not uncommon, and for me, the 4th job is
               | what got bumped to the second page.
               | 
               | You could have an entire discussion about how long people
               | should stay at their jobs, but I don't think it's unusual
               | to see someone with 4+ jobs in 10 years on their resume,
               | and it's not ipso facto a red flag. I also have a small
               | number of non-work projects which belong on my resume.
               | People will also put non-industry work experience on
               | their resume.
        
         | tomjen3 wrote:
         | > I always hated Microsoft Word and me having to think how to
         | format words as I type.
         | 
         | This is the best kept secret that is blantly shown openly in
         | Word.
         | 
         | Styles. You select the text you want to be a certain type
         | (quote, title, header, whatever) and mark it. If you don't find
         | a suitable style, you create a new one.
         | 
         | Then, later, you can change your styles to look however you
         | want, including margin, font, etc.
         | 
         | Using Word you do not have to choose what it should look like
         | while you write it, and unlike LaTeX, (which I love) you can
         | see what it will look like at any given time.
        
       | SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
       | While the first item in their "Why LaTeX?" list is "Separates
       | content from formatting/styling", I would say that my biggest
       | problems with Latex is it doesn't actually separates content from
       | formatting/styling. While there is a limited support for
       | something almost akin to a stylesheet, in practice for the user,
       | changing the style of something inevitably means changing the
       | macro you call on your content instead of changing the style
       | elsewhere. Latex was maybe the best tool in the 80s, but since
       | the 90s or 00s XML/HTML/SGML/... are much better alternatives,
       | with actual separation of content from formatting/styling.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ElemenoPicuares wrote:
         | Completely separating styling from content seems dogmatic in
         | this context. It certainly makes sense when working with long
         | documents with standardized style, or ones that need to be
         | processed with code, but I don't think that really applies.
         | From what I understand, even ATS resume processing is a blunt
         | instrument that assumes the content will be commonly formatted
         | word docs or PDFs, and sending it better quality data will not
         | yield better quality results. I think defining styles in an
         | OO.org document would suit the task much better. Different
         | strokes for different folks and all that, but this seems like a
         | hammer thinking everything looks like a nail.
        
         | rcpt wrote:
         | Use LaTeX because if the hiring manager has a PhD they'll
         | instantly recognize res.cls and put you at the top of the pile
        
           | helmholtz wrote:
           | That's a bit _too_ much of a blanket statement. Latex isn 't
           | special. Everyone I know has used it, 100% of them have
           | struggled with margins and fonts and images and equations
           | needing to be rewritten three times and so on. I would not
           | find a Latex resume even remotely novel or interesting. I
           | certainly wouldn't downplay it, but Latex isn't instant-
           | streetcred either.
        
         | dietrichepp wrote:
         | I agree with the sentiment. You _can_ make stylesheets for
         | LaTeX, without changing the macros you call in your content,
         | but it's a somewhat arcane process. Go on the TeX Stack
         | Exchange site and someone will explain how to do it if you
         | want. I don't need that. ConTeXt is better at this.
         | 
         | I've been doing my resume in ConTeXt. Seems like it's more
         | expected in ConTeXt that you mess with the styling.
         | \reshdr{Software Engineer, Yoyodyne}       \ressub{November
         | 1981--June 1984}       \startresdesc         Made a million
         | widgets.       \stopresdesc
         | 
         | It's reasonably common & expected in ConTeXt to define your own
         | macros for custom sections or whatever you need. ConTeXt has
         | macros to define macros...
         | \definehead[reshdr][subsection]
         | \setuphead[reshdr][textstyle=\bfx,number=no,before=\vskip
         | 1em,after={},align={flushleft,nothyphenated}]
        
         | abhishekbasu wrote:
         | While HTML and other markup languages are great, I wonder if
         | there is a way to use a word processor while creating the
         | document - focusing only on content (spellcheck, etc.) and not
         | on formatting or on syntax. Then, a context specific converter
         | (that is specific to the type of content - a resume, a
         | newsletter, a FAQ page, etc.) takes care of adding the
         | formatting and publishing it.
         | 
         | As an example, recently, I had to create a bunch of FAQ pages,
         | and I created a tool like [1]. While Pandoc can be used, I
         | still need to worry about (at least basic) formatting the doc
         | while typing it out in the word processor to make it look good
         | in the HTML output.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/abhishekbasu/faq2html
        
           | aquafox wrote:
           | Have you heard of Quarto?
        
         | ChadNauseam wrote:
         | In my experience, HTML+CSS is better in every way _except_ page
         | breaks. If they added more pagination-related features, it 'd
         | be better in every way. It's been too long since I played with
         | it, but I remember tons of weird issues, like images being at
         | the bottom of one page and the caption being on the top of the
         | next, etc.
         | 
         | Additionally, CSS really needs way to say "when text overflows
         | from this container, put it in this other container". With
         | that, it could replace Indesign for me.
         | 
         | That said the rate of improvement with CSS is really great.
         | :has() alone is super powerful. I also love color-contrast().
        
           | kroltan wrote:
           | There is a draft for the CSS spec to allow this, the CSS
           | Regions Module: https://caniuse.com/css-regions
           | 
           | However, it seems to have been abandoned.
        
         | lordgroff wrote:
         | Yeah I hate to agree with this because while I love the idea of
         | LaTeX--yep, it doesn't separate content and style. You get
         | markup all over the place and it's often cryptic as hell. My
         | resume is in LaTeX and I hate editing it because I'm always
         | afraid the styling is going to break in some subtle way and
         | then I have to figure out exactly what went wrong.
        
         | joshgev wrote:
         | Yeah I came here to say this as well. I gave up on LaTeX for my
         | resume something like ten years ago. Since then I use HTML/CSS
         | and render it with wkhtmltopdf.
         | 
         | edit: grammar
        
         | jahewson wrote:
         | Indeed it does not.
        
         | woolion wrote:
         | The style is never entirely separate. Putting a class "side-
         | image", "inline-image" or "centered-image" is a styling choice.
         | Sure you put a lot of the detailing stuff in the css, but you
         | can as well trivially define your own macro in Latex to
         | separate most of the gnarly stuff, or define your own style. If
         | you don't want to be able to control precisely individual
         | elements, then there's only semantic markup left. I would say
         | the main difference between the two is that in Latex it
         | requires slightly more knowledge to use good practices. In html
         | there's no difficulty difference between good and bad
         | practices, but there's nothing to enforce good practices
         | either.
        
           | el_nahual wrote:
           | That's why proponents of "semantic css" (RIP) would have said
           | the correct classes would have been "secondary-image" or
           | "main-image" or "accent-image" or something like that, with
           | the stylesheet deciding if if "secondary-image" should be at
           | the side, alternating, or whatever.
        
       | RazorX wrote:
       | I write my CV and resume in LaTeX using moderncv and a customized
       | version of deedy-resume. The CV repo is public if you're curious:
       | https://github.com/evansosenko/curriculum-vitae
       | 
       | If you are hacking on this today, you can use this starter repo
       | to get a LaTeX project setup that builds and publishes your
       | document with GitHub Actions: https://github.com/makenew/latex-
       | project
        
         | xavxav wrote:
         | Just checked your CV and it seems like the PDF version has
         | several typos, specifically it says you are CTO at Meltwater
         | when I think you meant at Pureskill.gg and is missing the entry
         | for Seam
         | 
         | :)
        
           | RazorX wrote:
           | Fixed, thank you!
        
         | sbrother wrote:
         | I made mine based on an ancient cls file years ago, update it
         | every year or so and it's worked great. Repo is also public
         | (you can click on the PDF to see what it looks like) at
         | https://github.com/sbrother/resume.
        
       | 50 wrote:
       | TeXShop[1] has been my editor of choice for years.
       | 
       | 1. https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/texshop/
        
       | abalaji wrote:
       | The common thread in the comments here deals with separating
       | content from styling. I dealt with the same issue when I was
       | applying to jobs and tweaked the `yaml-resume` project to suit my
       | needs. [1] It lets you specify the content in a yaml file which
       | then generated an html page that can be printed (sample output
       | linked). [2]
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/adithyabsk/resume
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IGC6KN2SkF4behZUOlOlWnbaMpH...
        
       | mickotron wrote:
       | I tried doing a resume in LaTeX but failed. It's now in YAML,
       | with layout in HAML and styling in CSS.
       | 
       | I am not a developer so I am aware it won't live up to any kind
       | of standards you might have.
       | 
       | https://gitlab.com/mickotronic/resume-build
       | 
       | Edit: My LaTeX attempt actually didn't fail, it was just
       | unmaintainable (for me). https://gitlab.com/mickotronic/latex-
       | resume
        
       | languagehacker wrote:
       | "Oh hey, I can tell this resume was set in LaTeX."
       | 
       | "By the font?"
       | 
       | "No, by the lack of industry experience."
        
       | ahmetsait wrote:
       | I've been using Word for my resume up until a week ago but
       | rewrote it in html+css because having to keep translated versions
       | of the same document in sync started to become annoying. Now I
       | have a simple pipeline where it builds the document from a text
       | template with content filled from a given yaml file (e.g.
       | `en.yml`, `fr.yml`). The result is self-contained html files in
       | different languages based on the same outline & style. Feels a
       | bit overengineered but turned out to be pretty neat. Oh, also I
       | can see changes instantly in browser and save as pdf before the
       | LaTeX engine is done compiling ;)
        
       | gnarbarian wrote:
       | this is great. I recently created a markdown -> pandoc resume
       | process I really enjoy. not as much flexibility or control as
       | LaTeX buts a lot easier.
       | 
       | https://github.com/ubernaut/resume
        
       | gen220 wrote:
       | Personally, I've found the workflow of markdown --[pandoc]-->
       | LaTeX / HTML to be very productive.
       | 
       | Having a single source of truth for web and PDFs is pretty nice.
       | Editing Markdown is more pleasant than either HTML or LaTeX, and
       | yet pandoc still permits you to bundle in LaTeX/CSS headers to
       | fine-tune your generated docs' appearances.
       | 
       | You can also very rapidly get visual feedback into your output
       | (<leader>d runs my makefile on the current file in vim, which
       | will generate the pdf/html in <1 s, which I can then see in a pdf
       | viewer / web browser)
        
         | MikeKusold wrote:
         | Very nice. I only use LaTeX for my resume, but I have my resume
         | written in JSON so that I can easily keep my website and PDF
         | in-sync. CI auto-builds and publishes both.
        
       | KMag wrote:
       | Back in school, I remember mentioning to a friend that "Don't the
       | Microsoft Research CS papers look a bit different? Whenever I
       | feel like a paper looks a bit off, I look up and see the authors
       | have Microsoft email addresses." and he pointed out to me that MS
       | creates their papers in Word and pretty much all of the other
       | papers I read were in LaTeX.
       | 
       | If your CV is generated from LaTeX -> PDF and all of the others
       | are Word -> PDF, your CV will subtly stand out. Depending on the
       | reader, the subconscious/conscious connection with CS papers may
       | be a plus or a minus.
       | 
       | It's hard to say if having my CV in LaTeX has actually helped me,
       | but this is the reason I use LaTeX for my CV.
        
         | canada2us wrote:
         | I would have to agree with this. But I'd like to point out that
         | recruiters should evaluate whether the job candidate is capable
         | of doing their job rather than what format their CV is in.
        
           | Shish2k wrote:
           | I agree we _should_ be evaluating "this candidate is a good
           | engineer" and ignoring "this candidate has various attributes
           | which often correlate with being a good engineer" - but how
           | do you propose measuring the former? Bear in mind that even
           | factors like "does well in a coding interview" is actually an
           | example of the latter, not the former
        
         | lrem wrote:
         | I've known a team in INRIA writing their papers in Word. It
         | felt so weird...
        
         | seanmcdirmid wrote:
         | I worked for MSR for ~7 years and all of the papers I worked on
         | were in LaTeX, all the papers I saw from my colleagues were
         | written in LaTeX as well. The only people who wrote papers in
         | Word were from academic communities where that already happened
         | often (e.g. lots of Word papers in HCI conferences; I was in
         | the PL and OS communities where it was very rare to see papers
         | written in Word).
         | 
         | But yes, a paper written in MS Word is glaring by how it
         | handles kerning and hyphenation. You'd be surprised how much
         | products teams don't care about type setting (and Google Docs
         | at Google where I work now is about the same).
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | > kerning and hyphenation
           | 
           | So these are still broken in modern word-processors? Or
           | expected to be manually tweaked? Seems odd decades later.
        
         | SnooSux wrote:
         | I've handed my resume at career fairs and I twice they noticed
         | and pointed out that it was LaTeX and it impressed them a
         | little bit.
         | 
         | But I was a EE student so maybe it'd be different in another
         | field.
        
         | jahewson wrote:
         | > MS creates their papers in Word
         | 
         | I used to collaborate with MSR and never saw anything but LaTeX
         | being used. If you look at the level of sophistication in many
         | of their papers it's not something Word can even begin to
         | achieve.
        
           | KMag wrote:
           | Hmm... most of my exposure to Microsoft CS papers was in the
           | late 1990s/early 2000s. Perhaps things have changed, or maybe
           | it was just the set of authors that I read. In any case, the
           | layout was markedly different, and once my friend pointed out
           | that it wasn't just in my head, that they weren't using
           | LaTeX, it was hard for me to un-see.
        
         | UltimateEdge wrote:
         | I use Calibri in my LaTeX resume for this reason.
        
           | johnwalkr wrote:
           | I can't put my finger on why but I've found Pages on MacOS
           | good for maintaining a resume that fits precisely in two
           | pages.
        
         | ndiddy wrote:
         | With a little bit of effort, it's easy to bridge the gap
         | without having to switch to LaTeX:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlX_pThh7z8
        
       | sidmitra wrote:
       | Having gone that route word -> latex -> html; i've converged to
       | using an Open source desktop publishing app called Scribus [0].
       | You get WYSIWYG, but on an open format. There wasn't anything
       | fancy to learn on the tool. The app is actually used to all kinds
       | of magazines and books, so a resume is pretty simple compared to
       | those.
       | 
       | If you need a template to get started, you can use mine here [1].
       | The output pdf is also in the repo(although haven't updated it in
       | 5 years now!). Reminds me to go and fix/refactor it a bit.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.scribus.net/
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://github.com/sidmitra/sidmitra.com/blob/master/static/...
        
         | JasonFruit wrote:
         | Scribus is amazing. I published a hymnal using it and other
         | open source tools, and it was the easiest part of the toolchain
         | to make do what I want. It's even scriptable with Python.
        
       | hawski wrote:
       | I remember that at one job we (dev team) were very excited for
       | the candidate that has sent the resume in a txt file for an
       | linuxy/embeddy position.
        
       | lucumo wrote:
       | I used to create my resume in LaTeX. Very over-engineered and a
       | lot of work to make. And not even that easy to update. Over the
       | years I moved on to a simple Word document that I just copy-and-
       | edit when I search for something new. Far less effort for the
       | same pay-off, so it's much more efficient.
       | 
       | LaTeX might still be worth it for large documents (e.g. books)
       | with lots of mathematical type-setting, but for small stuff Word
       | is much easier.
        
         | MengerSponge wrote:
         | One major benefit of LaTeX is it's free, it will always be
         | free, and it probably looks nice.
         | 
         | One major downside of LaTeX generated PDFs is HR's pdf parsers
         | mangle them, and you'll spend hours manually keying elements
         | into any application website you're unfortunate enough to
         | encounter. It's probably a wash.
         | 
         | For a CV, LaTeX is way, way, way better for your personal
         | bibliography. BibTex/BibLaTeX make it so nice to have a list of
         | publications in your document.
        
           | deltarholamda wrote:
           | >One major downside of LaTeX generated PDFs is HR's pdf
           | parsers mangle them
           | 
           | Can you expand on this? I would have thought that parsing a
           | LaTeX PDF would be way, way easier than some random word
           | processor's export-to-PDF.
        
             | MengerSponge wrote:
             | But it isn't some random word processor. It's Word. This
             | might change with the growing use of Google Docs, but Word
             | is basically a monoculture. It might be easier to handle
             | the weirdos who use LaTeX, but there aren't enough of us.
             | 
             | There's also a chance that they mangle everybody's
             | documents, and HR is just inflicting hours of toil on
             | millions for no real reason at all.
             | 
             | Well structured Word files are based on forms and have
             | well-labeled fields. That might help? I dunno. Maybe a
             | Microsoft person or a Salesforce person can lift the
             | curtain a smidge.
        
             | dietrichepp wrote:
             | LaTeX is old. It was designed long before PDFs existed.
             | Long before Unicode existed. You can get a good PDF out of
             | LaTeX but it requires some work.
             | 
             | You'd think that the "semantic" nature of LaTeX makes it
             | easy, but there's an expansive set of macros between the
             | source document and the PDF.
             | 
             | Just one example--LaTeX does things like replace "---" with
             | "--" or replace "fi" with "fi". How does LaTeX do it? At
             | some point, somebody wrote some code which recognizes those
             | patterns in the source file and emits the appropriate
             | glyph. But these replacements are not equivalent--the "---"
             | em dash needs to be a Unicode character with its own glyph,
             | and "fi" needs to be two characters that share one glyph.
             | Not important for DVI files, but important for PDF files
             | where you want to copy the text out.
             | 
             | You _can_ get this to work in LaTeX but it won't work
             | correctly by default, depending on how you are getting a
             | PDF file. You end up with a preamble in all your LaTeX
             | files to make them work nicely. You also probably want to
             | use xelatex or lualatex instead of pdflatex (I don't keep
             | up with this stuff--get up to date recommendations
             | elsewhere).
        
           | MengerSponge wrote:
           | For the five readers who have LaTeX CVs, here's a useful
           | trick. It's easy to add a fleuron to noteworthy publications
           | or elements in a list:                 \section{Publications}
           | \blfootnote{\adforn{63} indicates Editors' Suggestion}
           | \begin{enumerate}[align=right]           \item
           | [\adforn{63}\,\stepcounter{enumi}\labelenumi]
           | \fullcite{greatpaper}           \item
           | \fullcite{prettygoodpaper}
        
           | a_e_k wrote:
           | I always proof mine with pdftotext.
           | 
           | I figure that if that can extract the raw text correctly
           | without mangling it, then it'll probably be okay for whatever
           | applicant tracking system a company is using.
           | 
           | (My preference for my resume these days is LuaLaTeX with nice
           | OpenType fonts.)
        
         | moffkalast wrote:
         | > LaTeX might still be worth it for large documents
         | 
         | Having written my thesis in it, I can say that it very much
         | isn't. If you don't plan ahead and make sure you split chapters
         | into individual files it takes actual minutes to compile and
         | when it doesn't it's nigh impossible to figure out where the
         | problem is because the error logs somehow manage to be less
         | useful than if there weren't any logs at all.
         | 
         | It's a very nice idea in concept but the implementation is just
         | arghhh. My current go-to for this sort of thing is Markdown
         | instead. It may be far less powerful but it's also far more
         | practical in almost all cases.
        
         | bfors wrote:
         | Same for me. Now my resume is in a google doc and still looks
         | great. Latex just wasn't worth the time spent tinkering, and
         | I'm not convinced better typesetting helps developers get jobs.
        
         | denysvitali wrote:
         | Same but I switched to a web page (with Vue) instead, that can
         | be printed as a PDF.
         | 
         | Definitely more manageable, especially when it comes to
         | alignment, multi-page tables and fonts.
         | 
         | Previous template: https://github.com/denysvitali/cv Rendered:
         | https://github.com/denysvitali/cv/blob/master/main.pdf
        
           | denysvitali wrote:
           | I just published the v2 (in Vue) on GitHub [1]. You can see
           | it live here [2]. It is obviously responsive and includes a
           | dark mode :)
           | 
           | [1]: https://github.com/denysvitali/cv-2
           | 
           | [2]: https://cv.denv.it/
        
           | UI_at_80x24 wrote:
           | Your resume looks great and is a good inspiration; but why
           | have your picture?
           | 
           | Unless you are applying for TV/Movies/Modeling....
        
             | allarm wrote:
             | It was (is?) a common thing in Germany and probably in
             | Switzerland as well.
        
               | UI_at_80x24 wrote:
               | Regardless of it being popular, it only opens oneself up
               | for being discriminated against.
               | 
               | Hiring person might have a bias against people with
               | blonde/brown/black hair. Oh! they look like they are
               | cocky and difficult. This person reminds me of my ex,
               | there is no way I could be in the same office.....
               | 
               | This list of biases are endless.
               | Sexism/Racism/Ableism/Ageism/etc are all given a free
               | pass if you include a picture, but become various shades
               | of obscure without it.
        
               | trosi wrote:
               | Or the opposite could happen. Bias works in both
               | directions.
        
               | ghostpepper wrote:
               | As an applicant it might be nice to get unfairly-
               | preferential treatment but at a system level bias in
               | either direction is undesirable
        
               | mixmastamyk wrote:
               | Make sure to have pointy hair if applying for a PHB
               | position.
        
               | UI_at_80x24 wrote:
               | haha, I have heard that it does; but my Hunchback of
               | NotreDame looking self would never know! =)
               | 
               | jk, I do benefit from white privilege and with a name as
               | common as John Smith I am sure I pass many other
               | unseen/unknown-to-me hurdles.
        
             | Yujf wrote:
             | I agree it is weird, but in Europe (atleast Belgium but I
             | assume other European countries as well, the commenter here
             | is living in Switserland) a CV generally contains a picture
        
             | denysvitali wrote:
             | Pretty common in EU (in my case, Switzerland).
             | 
             | I know that in some countries it is suggested to not put a
             | picture on the CV because they want to be as unbiased as
             | possible - but this is generally not an issue where I live.
             | 
             | In any case, as an Hiring Manager I do appreciate seeing
             | the faces of the candidates on their CVs. It adds some
             | personality to the CVs that are generally just black &
             | white.
             | 
             | But again, this is very cultural and might be seen in the
             | wrong way in, say, the US.
        
       | Bayko wrote:
       | I personally think latex resumes are overkill but if they work
       | for you that's great. But for everyone else, this is how to tell
       | your resume is "good". If those shitty workday sites can parse
       | your resume with no problem then your resume is "good". After
       | quite a few iterations my Google docs resume is "good"
        
         | melling wrote:
         | I've got a version in LaTeX and Word.
         | 
         | Perhaps "from scratch" is a bit of work but LaTeX is fine if
         | you find a template.
        
       | mkehrt wrote:
       | I've had a LaTeX resume for ~15 years. I'm not sure I would do it
       | from scratch now, but I don't need to update it that often.
       | 
       | That being said, I'm not sure what else I _would_ do it in. LaTeX
       | has the virtues that it hasn 't changed in 15 years and that it's
       | free.
        
       | c7DJTLrn wrote:
       | Nah, don't. You can make something much better by writing a
       | resume in HTML + CSS and converting it to a PDF. I have a GitHub
       | Actions pipeline that builds and uploads it as an artifact. Or I
       | can build it locally - all I need is Docker.
        
       | micro_cam wrote:
       | Does this parse in common he software?
       | 
       | Just stick it in a multi page doc or pdf with minimal formatting.
       | Resumes don't need to be one page.
       | 
       | Most of the resumes I see for candidates that make it to the
       | interview stage are multi page with very simple formatting. Lots
       | of keywords.
        
       | G3rn0ti wrote:
       | It's a well-written and informative guide! Thank you.
       | 
       | If your focus is separating content from styling and have good
       | version control of your CV (or other similarly short report type
       | documents) may I suggest to use org-mode instead that is able to
       | generate most of your latex for you:
       | https://opensource.com/article/20/4/emacs-org-mode
        
       | lukew3 wrote:
       | I find it difficult to manually write latex when all I need is to
       | make small changes to a resume, so I built a Github workflow that
       | allows me to make changes to a json file with my resumes data and
       | automatically fill a latex template, then build to pdf with
       | Github actions. This also is nice because there is always a
       | permanent link to the most is to date version of my resume. You
       | can see it or fork it here: https://github.com/lukew3/resume.
        
         | flir wrote:
         | Similar here, but markdown -> pandoc -> PDF/Word.
         | 
         | The real benefit, IMO, is being able to branch the source file.
         | The master branch contains all the texts (multiple personal
         | statements for example) and the child branches only contain
         | deletions. Makes changes trivial.
        
       | yodsanklai wrote:
       | I used to have my resume in latex (coming from academia, it
       | seemed natural). Nowadays, I wouldn't bother, unless you enjoy
       | playing with latex of course. But it's not going to give you any
       | significant advantage (most companies get your resume from
       | linkedin anyway), and unless you're very proficient with latex,
       | it's going to take more time creating it.
        
       | BrandonS113 wrote:
       | I have a lot of respect for someone doing that. I really tried to
       | make my CV work in latex and failed. But for anything I do latex
       | in better than the alternatives I have tried, word, markdown,
       | html+css, powerpoint. All of these might be better in 90% of
       | cases, but the last 10% is where latex delivers and they don't.
       | Still, I almost always agree with latex haters. I do not like
       | using it. But until something comes that can do all that latex
       | does, well there is latex or nothing.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | I've been using LaTeX for my resume since college. I always get
       | compliments on how my resume is so pleasant to look at, stands
       | out because it's not the same template as everyone else, etc. A
       | lot of recruiters ask me where to get the Word template for it.
       | 
       | But the greatest joy I get is when people email me about how they
       | used my TeX source to make their resume and suddenly got a lot
       | more interest.
       | 
       | And the most hilarious was when I got a resume once that looked
       | suspiciously like my own, and when I asked them about it in the
       | interview, they told me the copied one from the internet and I
       | pointed out that they had copied mine! We both had a good laugh.
       | I honestly don't remember if I hired them or not.
       | 
       | If anyone wants a copy of my resume TeX source, let me know
       | (contact info in profile).
        
       | kqr wrote:
       | I would argue LaTeX is the wrong tool for a resume. A resume,
       | like a poster or graphical magazine article, is all about visual
       | presentation and layout. This requires pixel-perfect control over
       | where things are, and somewhat detailed ways to coordinate
       | positions of things. All of these are things LaTeX is bad at[1].
       | 
       | For visual presentation, I would suggest desktop publishing
       | software are the right tool for the job. I personally like
       | Scribus because it's open soucre. Something like this is trivial
       | with desktop publishing and would be really time consuming with
       | LaTeX: https://i.xkqr.org/screenshot_2023-01-24T19:21:25.png
       | 
       | [1]: The strength of LaTeX is in consistently typesetting long
       | texts well - it's nearly unbeatable in that area.
        
         | DicIfTEx wrote:
         | As someone who generally enjoys using LaTeX, who spent several
         | years maintaining a LaTeX CV and who switched to Scribus a
         | couple of years ago, this is bang-on. The content-styling
         | separation is very intuitive in Scribus (and, I assume, other
         | DTP tools): define the bounds of your text boxes (and link them
         | if required for your intended document layout), then edit the
         | text in a seperate box and instantly see how it flows into the
         | defined area(s).
         | 
         | Of course, most of the jobs I've applied for in recent years
         | have required me to enter my experience section-by-section into
         | a Web form, negating the purpose of the CV entirely. Once or
         | twice I've seen tools that allow you to upload your CV PDF and
         | then attempt to extract as much info from it as possible. It's
         | never gone very well, so it does make me think that LaTeX vs
         | DTP vs Word is a less pertinent question to debate than 'how
         | can I produce a CV that can best be automatically parsed'.
         | Absent any sort of structured CV data standard, I assume that
         | means using the most widely-used tool to produce it, i.e. Word.
        
         | dietrichepp wrote:
         | I did mine in ConTeXt, which is IMO more suited to general-
         | purpose work and futzing with the layout than LaTeX is.
         | 
         | I generally edit the resume and fine-tune it for each position
         | I'm applying for. That's easy to do when the sources are plain
         | text, and I can just diff different versions to see what edits
         | I've made in the past.
         | 
         | I'm not applying for graphics design or marketing positions. A
         | resume can look nice, but it's not all about visual
         | presentation and layout--it's about content first, and the
         | layout is just there to support the content and make it easy to
         | read. Long ago, I made my resume using professional layout
         | software. Adobe InDesign, actually. I switched to ConTeXt
         | mostly because it's easier to make content changes. I haven't
         | used Scribus, but my experience is that making content changes
         | in layout software is often annoying, unless you're using some
         | really basic templates or you've put a lot of work into your
         | workflow.
        
       | NeutralForest wrote:
       | I use komacv (see here: https://www.ctan.org/pkg/komacv) it works
       | fine and looks great, I had to reduce the margins to but a bit
       | more content in there though. I'll maybe try to do my CV as a
       | single HTML/CSS page in the future though.
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | I made my resume in LaTeX. I took the care to use \latex to make
       | sure anyone reading and knowing what it was could identify it. I
       | had the impression it was not the best tool for that purpose, but
       | it was the "devil I know". My intention behind it was: if any
       | sympathizer sees this, I'll get extra points.
       | 
       | I got the job. The guy who read my resume said to me: "When I saw
       | it, I knew there was intelligence behind it."
        
       | wycy wrote:
       | One thing I really like about having my resume in LaTeX is I can
       | have a ton of bullet points always in the file commented out, and
       | just uncomment the most fitting ones for each specific job
       | application.
        
       | cliff_badger wrote:
       | If you have any interest in building the document locally, here
       | is a container I've used in the past.
       | 
       | (I haven't needed it in a year or so, so it may need some
       | updates...)
       | 
       | https://gitlab.com/fearthebadger/latex-build-container
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | 1-more wrote:
       | \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}         \usepackage[urw-
       | garamond]{mathdesign}         \usepackage{garamondx}
        
       | FlyingSnake wrote:
       | I use Overleaf1 to great success. It has all the upsides, without
       | the hassles to setup a build chain.
       | 
       | 1: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/tagged/cv
        
       | mrpotato wrote:
       | I am sometimes required to have my resume in multiple languages.
       | My current workflow is to create a copy of an english version and
       | then translate it to the language required.
       | 
       | Would LaTeX make this easier, using something like templating
       | where I could have a resource file for each language or would I
       | still need to maintain multiple versions?
        
       | dariosalvi78 wrote:
       | I have my CV in Latex, I am an academic and an important part of
       | the CV is the publications list. With Latex I can export my
       | publications from Zotero (where I keep them updated) or just have
       | a bibtex file and include (and link!) them in my CV. If you are
       | not an academic, then I don't really see the advantage of using
       | Latex vs, say, Word.
        
       | penguincodes wrote:
       | Most LaTeX resumes are just templates people slightly modify but
       | don't really understand, so I wrote a small guide for actually
       | understanding how to build up to one
        
       | throw0101c wrote:
       | I've used the currvita package:
       | 
       | * https://ctan.org/pkg/currvita
       | 
       | * https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/cv-template-using-t...
        
       | AstixAndBelix wrote:
       | I think using LaTeX in your resume is not only overkill but also
       | visually displeasing. The CV you send out to get hired should be
       | no longer than 1 or 2 pages, there is no point in using LaTeX for
       | this tiny amount of content.
       | 
       | What actually is best suited for the purpose is using a desktop
       | publishing sofware like Scribus, with which you can visually
       | craft your CV and tastefully organize it without losing your
       | sleep over LaTeX quirks.
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | Did this just to have it in git, honestly. The only thing I've
       | ever used it for in all the years is for immigration purposes and
       | I don't think they give a fuck.
        
       | rbalicki wrote:
       | I created my resume by building a one page website and having
       | some script print it to PDF. Worked great, and was a nice talking
       | point for interviews, until many years later I npm installed and
       | it stopped working
        
         | edflsafoiewq wrote:
         | You used npm for the printing part? You can print to PDF with a
         | web browser. Chrome can do it from the CLI so you can script it
         | if you want.
        
       | jame-se wrote:
       | I've written my resume in LaTeX for the last decade. I can
       | version control it in git, I can easily keep track of what
       | resumes go where with tags, and I have a Jenkins pipeline that
       | automatically compiles my resume and pushes it to another repo.
        
       | jcelerier wrote:
       | here's mine if that can be useful for anyone, i like the theme:
       | https://gitlab.com/jcelerier/cv
        
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