
Why I do my resume in LaTeX - gnosis
http://www.toofishes.net/blog/why-i-do-my-resume-latex/
======
moe
LaTeX needs a modern successor.

Yes, the output looks \bf{gorgeous}. But the underlying toolchain and language
are past their expiration date. By far.

Tasks as simple as "let's add an image here" or "let's move this to the left a
little" frequently turn into hour-long journeys deep down into the guts of a
30 year old codebase.

There is no reason why a modern tool couldn't use the same algorithms to
create equally beautiful output. We're not writing raw postscript to talk to
our printers anymore either.

\end{rant}

~~~
wgrover
Yes! Here's what I want in a modern successor to LaTeX:

\- Default output is PDF (DVI is a port on my computer :) )

\- Optional DOC/DOCX output (even if it supports just a subset of the
program's capabilities)

\- Bibliography management built-in (no separate ancient BibTeX)

\- Command-line searching and importing from Pubmed / Google Scholar / etc.
built-in

\- Bibliography styles can be created/edited by normal humans

\- Syntax closer to Markdown or reStructuredText, to enhance readability of
source file (and maybe shrink the learning curve)

\- Program is smaller than 1.6 GB (the size of the default MacTeX distro).

I've played with writing something like this for a while (in Python). The
hardest part for me has been dealing with bibliography data - there's always
one more weird Pubmed record that breaks my XML parser. Makes me really
appreciate Knuth/Lamport/Patashnik and their successors.

~~~
Quiark
Some answers: \- Default output to PDF has been there for years.

\- The base .tex syntax will probably never change, but there is no reason why
some tool/plugin/luatex extension couldn't read something else and convert as
necessary. I used Deplate and Pandoc for a while.

\- AFAIK ConTeXt has some integrated replacement for bibtex

I don't think we need a successor to LaTeX. The base is solid and ready to be
built on, especially now with a sane programming language in the core of
LuaTeX.

------
iuguy
If you're ever planning on sending your CV to a recruiter, don't use LaTeX.
Recruiters (reputation for being upgraded estate agents and scum of the earth
aside) will want to remove any contact details from your CV to ensure that
their client doesn't attempt to contact you except through them. This is why
they'll push for word document versions.

You might think, "Oh, well I'll just find a recruiter that won't do this" but
depending on your chosen profession this may be harder than you think.

You might think, "Ok, well I'll just create a PDF version without contact
details on it" but that's not enough, because some recruiters actually don't
put people forward because they sent PDFs, while telling them that they're
putting them forward - the reason being that you're at the back of the queue
not because of ability but because you're 'difficult' or they're not able to
stick the recruiters logo on or easily paste into their template.

Now if none of this is an issue for you, feel free to go ahead and submit a
latex generated pdf. Sadly, Word is the lingua franca of recruitment. I've had
two guys interview with me independently of a recruiter for positions after
said recruiter told them they'd put them forward when they didn't - in both
cases the used a Latex CV.

Finally, formatting is relevant only to a point - if you've got experience in
your field then that trumps any formatting. I've hired guys who use comic sans
in their CV because they were bloody brilliant, not because they were funny.

~~~
chris_j
OK, here's a question: why do companies use recruitment consultants? I've
never heard a nice word said about them, certainly not in the tech/IT field.
Not by people who work for companies hiring, not by jobs applicants. What
value do they add, other than going through a big pile of CVs/resumes and
turning it into a smaller pile of CVs/resumes (and, by the sounds of things,
likely tossing out a whole load of excellent candidates in many cases)?

~~~
iuguy
A recruiter would be better positioned to add value than I. I've dealt with
recruiters on an employer and employee basis and it generally varies massively
as to what you get. Out of all the recruiters I've known, there's only one
that I have a long term relationship and would consider a friend. That's not a
positive note for an industry, given that I've led recruitment in about 4
different jobs across two industries.

If you imagine a pre-Internet world, recruiters would provide employers value
by having a large potential labour pool, searching that pool for 'talent',
then (allegedly) doing some sort of screening so that HR gets CVs that are
relevant to the post.

In the modern age, much of this could be bypassed but some companies (most
notably larger companies) have exclusive contracts with large recruiters,
meaning that if you want to work there you have to go through a specific
recruiter.

Madness, I know, and an industry ripe for disruption but full of people that
would fight tooth and nail against it (and not just the recruiters but the
employers in some cases).

------
ranchev
Nice to see that others do it too! The real problem I have seen with resumes
in PDF format is that most companies (actually mostly agencies) tend to ask
for .doc files. In fact a lot of their online application process requires
.doc files.

I have a very simple solution - avoid applying there! Often people who tend to
write their resumes in LaTeX would find most of these jobs less than
acceptable anyways.

When exceptions are required I extract a text version of the resume latex2
rtf/txt/html (or combination) tend to work ok. The rtf and text can easily be
saved as .doc. Of course thing are never going to be as pretty as the PDF (but
then again these job applications are rarely priorities)

Here is a sample derived from my resume: <http://ranchev.net/latex>

~~~
gnosis
_"...a lot of their online application process requires .doc files.

I have a very simple solution - avoid applying there!"_

Amen to that.

If more people voted with their feet when companies pull this sort of crap,
the world would be much better place.

------
neild
I use ASCII. Everyone can read it, I can paste it into emails, and I waste no
time fiddling around with formatting on a document that will just be scanned
for a few keywords and discarded.

~~~
retroafroman
When I was applying at many of the big engineering firms last year, several of
them wanted a copy pasted, text only version of my resume. Maintaining a copy
of the resume in good plaintext form is always a bonus. Well worth the slight
bother when updating.

~~~
billswift
Another advantage to keeping a plaintext copy is that it can be quickly
formatted however an employer may require it.

------
jbrennan
What I'd like to know is why not just do up the resumé in HTML and style with
CSS? I'm not a web designer by any means, but getting a simple style up and
running is no big stretch (especially if you're capable of LaTeX markup).

To be fair, I still don't have a resumé in HTML (I'd use Markdown), but I
haven't needed to update mine in a while. Next time I do, I'm going HTML with
a print stylesheet.

~~~
sliverstorm
1) HTML pages are not inherently printer-friendly

2) LaTeX is a text formatting language. It can be argued HTML is
(fundamentally) also a text formatting language, but if you submit a resume to
me _styled_ with HTML and CSS using colors and graphics and drop shadows, I
will personally _burn_ your resume, damn the consequences.

~~~
jbrennan
You're right, HTML itself isn't printer friendly, but it's really only a
semantic document. It's up to you to style it with a print stylesheet.

And of course, I wouldn't use CSS to colour everything and add gradients and
all that junk. The goal is simply to create a nice layout in a format that
doesn't depend on MS Word or LaTeX (which, nice though it may be, is alien to
most and also not as commonly installed as a web browser).

And naturally, I'd print-to-PDF before sending off to a recruiter. Mac OS X
Print-To-PDF is really quite lovely.

------
bgentry
Before my most recent job search (~4 mo. ago) I finally invested the time and
effort to break free of Word docs and switch to LaTeX.

Honestly, I spent about a week relearning the basic syntax (it's been years)
and learning how to do much more advanced formatting than I had done before.

The effort I put in was worth _every_ single minute. I started with a fairly
advanced template and tweaked the hell out of it until I was satisfied with
the end result. I now have a resume that is:

1) version controlled in git as text/code (don't underestimate how cool this
is)

2) very simple to update or add sections to without worrying about breaking
Word's formatting

3) looks stunning, imho

4) got me callbacks from nearly every place I applied to. I feel like the eye-
catching resume was a huge part of this

You write code all day long.. formatting a document with it just makes so much
more sense once you make the initial time investment.

If a recruiter or job site can't handle the PDF, I don't want to work with
them anyway.

------
burgerbrain
I do it because: It looks baller, I get positive comments on it in my
interviews every time, and it's easier than using Word. Why typeset when
computers can for you?

~~~
gnosis
I've never fretted over and spent so much time on minutia of typesetting as I
have with LaTeX.

I suppose it's fine if you're satisfied with some default look that someone
else has come up with for your document. But for me that's never good enough.

I want my documents to look a certain way, and it's virtually never the case
that any LaTeX class or document style looks good enough with the default
settings. So I wind up doing endless tweaking until finally it looks the way I
want it to.

Of course, by then it does look brilliant. And the time spent is well worth
it. But you do have to put in the time to get these kinds of results, if the
default settings don't suit you.

~~~
burgerbrain
See the section _"Format once, change the content a lot"_ in the article. (
_particularly_ important with resumes) If that's not true in your case, you're
almost by definition using LaTeX incorrectly.

~~~
gnosis
_"Format once, change the content a lot"_

That assumes a number of things:

First, it assumes that at some point you'll settle on some perfect formatting
for all time. That's really unlikely (especially for me).

Second, it assumes that the same resume format is appropriate for each
prospective employer you'll be sending your resume to. There are many who feel
you should tailor your resume to the employer you're sending it to. That could
certainly include tailoring the format, depending on how different the jobs
you're applying for are. A resume for a web design job might look very
different from one for a programming job. And many people do both.

Third, it assumes your LaTeX skills will never improve and you'll never
discover new styles or fonts or tricks you'll want to apply to your resume to
make it better in the future. Things you didn't know at the time you first
wrote it.

All these are potentially incorrect assumptions. There are some great reasons
to keep tinkering with the formatting, even in LaTeX.

That said, I never implied in my original post that the reason that I spent a
lot of time futzing with the formatting in LaTeX was because I was re-
formatting stuff I'd already formatted to my satisfaction once. No. In fact,
it took a long time to format it in the first place.

Yes, it's true that maybe this will save me time and grief in the long run (if
I can let sleeping dogs lie, and not try to improve the formatting once I've
settled on one I like), but maybe not.

Anyway, I'm not trying to convince anyone to ditch LaTeX and switch to Word. I
love LaTeX. And I hate it. It's a love/hate thing. There are some really great
things about it. It can make your documents look marvelous, and you can do
some amazing things with it.

But it can also be very frustrating (especially if you want to do stuff that's
non-standard, and varies too far from the defaults that the (often broken)
document classes had in mind when they were written).

------
jefe78
I have to admit, when I saw this I went looking for resume examples in LaTeX
and I was impressed. I'm downloading Lyx right now(Linux high-level LaTeX
front-end) and intend to redo my resume...and I'm not even looking for work!
Its that appealing.

------
liljimmytables
As a great fan of latex, I would LOVE to use it to format my CV. But here in
Britain there are far too many HR departments and agencies who will look at
your pdf and say "I'm sorry, could you send the original Word doc?"

Not that recruiters are always the best way to get a job, but it would be
silly to write them out of my searches

~~~
marcog1
I've had that before. I sent them the latex source and they've been able to
handle the rest.

------
adulau
In the same idea, there are the nice looking resume template from Dario
Taraborelli: <http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex> (Typesetting your academic
CV in LaTeX).

If you want your CV _not to be seen in the crowd_ : the Europass CV LaTeX
template [http://www.ctan.org/tex-
archive/help/Catalogue/entries/europ...](http://www.ctan.org/tex-
archive/help/Catalogue/entries/europecv.html) ....

------
starpilot
I just use Word. It's easy, I know it already, and it looks nice:
<http://readlt.com/r.png>. Template if anyone's interested:
<http://readlt.com/resume-template.doc>

~~~
lkozma
It looks decent, I agree, but from typographic point of view, it looks lower
visual quality than LaTeX-produced text. Look at how the letters seem to be
unevenly aligned to the line, and the spacing between them is also not quite
right. See for example [something cool] in your screenshot. The first bracket
is miles away from the s, the closing bracket is stuck to the l.

EDIT: another issue further down: compare Sed and Vestibulum. In the latter
the e looks way too far from the initial letter. More careful kerning would
push the e a bit under V's wings.

I realize it's not the most important thing in the world, but still :) Anyway,
I don't claim to be an expert in typography at all, that's why I also use
LaTeX for my CV:

<http://www.lkozma.net/cv_kl.pdf>

~~~
kleiba
No wonder you became a computer scientist -- with that name! ;-)

~~~
lkozma
Not sure I get the joke, do you know someone famous with the same name or does
it just sound weird to you? :)

~~~
kleiba
The first Hungarian digital computer was designed in 1957 by someone with the
same name, if I'm not mistaken.

~~~
lkozma
Ah, yes, you are right :)

------
chris_j
He posted a follow up with a LaTeX resume template here:
<http://www.toofishes.net/blog/latex-resume-follow-up/>

I must confess that I don't understand it well but it has inspired me to
actually try LaTeX for the first time.

(EDIT - fixed dumb typo. Thanks, RiderOfGiraffes)

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Er, s/temple/template/ ??

------
billmcneale
If his résumé is so good, why isn't it available on his web site?

"Contact me by email and let me know a good reason you'd like to see it and
I'll be happy to send a copy along to you."

Sure, I will try to convince you that I want to see your résumé because your
skills look like a good match for a position I'm trying to fill. Except I
don't know your skills because... I don't have access to your résumé.

Talk about some ego.

~~~
pangram
He is perhaps trying to avoid aggressive recruiters.

------
jayzee
I do it because I can add my papers to a global bib file and then just \cite
them easily

------
bluesmoon
The last job I applied to, I sent a plain text resume and they were impressed.
Since then I've just kept my LinkedIn profile up to date and get a PDF from
that to send out (believe it or not, I need to send a resume to HR if I want
to change departments within the company).

------
tedunangst
Personally, I find a latex resume comes across as pretentious if it's your
only latex publication, which is usually easy to determine from its contents.

~~~
angrycoder
I don't think that word means what you think it means. I might consider it
pretentious if the resume was written with a dip pen on parchment embossed
with the family crest.

Taking a simple task like writing a document in Word and using it as an excuse
to learn a text formatting language sounds perfectly reasonable for a hacker.

~~~
tedunangst
I double checked.

    
    
        pretentious, adj.  Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed
    

Learning latex because you're curious is one thing. Using latex on your resume
solely to give the impression you know latex would qualify as "affecting
greater talent than is actually possessed".

~~~
pyre
I don't think that many people use LaTeX on their resume as a way to look
impressive just because they know LaTeX. I think that many people use it
because they find that it easier to control the layout of their document than
in something like MS Word or {Libre,Open}Office Writer. I spent a number of
years with a MS Word resume filled with tables to space things out correctly.
I used to dread needing to make changes to it because of how fragile the setup
was. On the other hand, I find it relatively easy to make changes to my resume
now that I have it in LaTeX.

------
ohkine
I don't understand the appeal. Every single LaTeX-based CV looks exactly the
same. The same mediocre serif fonts, the same structure, the same basic layout
in every way. I guess there is something to be said for the 'classic' way of
doing things -- i'm not saying it's bad per se -- but i certainly don't find
it novel or particularly 'gorgeous'.

As far as the ease of use and the typography functions, i find Pages (from the
iWork suite) to be more than adequate. The layout that he did would have taken
me only moments to re-create in Pages, and although LaTeX has some advanced
typography features that Pages and OS X don't, the latter seems sufficient to
me for just about anyone's CV.

------
billmcneale
This guy needs to spend a few more years in this industry, he will realize
that as long as your résumé doesn't contain typos, nobody cares what it looks
like. Hell, I even review résumés that are text files. The faster I can access
it and read the important stuff, the happier I am. I couldn't care less if
it's using TeX, LaTeX, Word, PDF or HTML, and I will probably even ding you if
you brag because you used LaTeX to write it, because you're using tools that
are twenty years old.

------
finemann
There is a very nice LaTeX class than can be used to make beautiful resume's:
[http://www.ctan.org/tex-
archive/macros/latex/contrib/modernc...](http://www.ctan.org/tex-
archive/macros/latex/contrib/moderncv/)

See sample resume's here: <http://www.math.uic.edu/~hurder/math589/vita.html>

------
e-dard
Is it weird that I was very surprised that anybody writes anything important
in anything _other_ than LaTeX??

------
Osmose
As this is turning into a "What do you use?" thread: I use Publisher. I can
precisely position everything on my resume, align it to a grid, etc. And if an
employer only accepts doc files, it's trivial to copy-paste the file contents
to Word and reposition them correctly.

------
malbertife
I use org-mode in Emacs: it's the fastest and most convenient way of editing a
document's structure I've found so far, and I find myself doing that a lot
with my resume. Then I export to LaTeX, HTML, or plain text.

~~~
reneky
How does the org -> latex -> pdf look in the end? Could you post it?

~~~
malbertife
It contains my home address, mobile number and so on, so I'd rather not post
it.

But it looks like a plain article class LaTeX document, except that I changed
the margins and the font (Palatino instead of Times). If you want a more
sophisticated layout you can customize the LaTeX-specific options; they'll be
ignored when you export to other formats.

------
misterm
So I'm on Linux - specifically Debian. Where do I start with LaTeX? Do I have
to use a specially created editor such as Lyx?

~~~
gnosis
No, you don't need any special editor. In fact, I wouldn't recommend using
one, as all the special editors are really just a crutch. It's much better to
learn how to program the underlying LaTeX itself, rather than rely on some
high-level tool to do it for you. (just my opinion here)

There are an absolute glut of LaTeX tutorials out there to get you started.
Here's one:

<http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/index.html>

But there are many, many others. Some are particularly good for people in
certain specialties. For instance, here's an excellent LaTeX resource for
logicians:

[http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/teaching_staff/Smith/logicmatters/...](http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/teaching_staff/Smith/logicmatters/l4llogiciansnew.html)

~~~
apl
Ha. I remember Smith being ridiculously adamant about everybody using LaTeX
for their essays and logic stuff...

------
trey
I just re-did my resume using indeed.com's resume uploader. It gives you a
nice clean formatted resume that you can share publicly, export to .pdf, or
email. I don't really see a point in using latex, with these new tools
available.

I think linkedin has a resume upload and maybe branchout does as well if you
are more of the social networking type.

------
dscape
If anyone is interested been doing this for ages.

You can get the template by git clone
git://github.com/dscape/NunoJobResume.git

------
goalieca
I have a latex resume and I run into a few problems. Some companies/agencies
only accept .doc formats. The latex2rtf or latex2txt is also error-prone. But,
my resume looks awesome and it's easy to move things around/add things without
any formatting. I haven't touched formatting in 5 years or so.

~~~
rick_2047
I used a latex class to format one of my papers. At the final date of
submission I found out they except only .doc format. I am still looking
desperately for a latex2doc converter. Anyone here knows about this?

~~~
gnosis
You could try asking on #latex on freenode. But, from what I remember, there
aren't any. Or at least not any that do a passable job.

One sort of hackish thing you could try is simply printing out your resume and
scanning it in. Then import the scanned pages as images directly in to the
Word document.

It will technically be in Word format, and may even look nice when printed
(assuming you've scanned your printouts in at a high enough resolution).
Though, of course, the text won't be editable.

~~~
bzbarsky
Under the assumption that the paper in question is being published in a
journal, that might be a bad idea. In my experience, journals will typically
take your content and then reformat it themselves to fit in whatever their
constraints are (page size, number of columns, possibly starting in the middle
of a page, etc, etc). For journals that take LaTeX submissions, they will
generally just apply their house style file. For journals that take Word
submissions, they will generally just apply their house Word style. For
journals that accept either one... see above. ;)

------
daniel-cussen
You can use <http://www.scribtex.com> to design latex documents, too.

------
ztan
I use jobspice.com and call it a day.

