
Show HN: CV Boilerplate – Easing the Process of Building a CV Using LaTeX - mrzool
https://github.com/mrzool/cv-boilerplate
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zackelan
I consider LaTeX resumes to be a secret handshake of sorts, something that
makes me significantly more likely to be inclined-to-hire a candidate.

If you're preparing formatted text, LaTeX is the best tool for the job. It
also has a steep learning curve. Preparing a resume with it says "I have the
technical judgement to use the best tool for this job, even if I had to learn
an arcane new programming language[0] to do it."

0: The best description I've ever read of TeX in general is that it's a
Turing-complete programming language with a compiler that outputs printer
assembly code (Postscript) rather than computer assembly.

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sdegutis
I can't agree. Having used LaTeX for about a year now, it's got all the
fragmentation and design-by-committee flaws of Linux, but much worse. There
are so many packages, and many are completely incompatible with each other.
And while TeX itself is pretty simple, LaTeX is much bigger, and using any
libraries on top of it pretty much requires hours of searching tex.so for
obscure fixes and workarounds, which are often counter-intuitive.

I'd rather hire someone who would have the sense to pay $20 for a month's
worth of InDesign, learn how to use it (which also has a steep learning
curve), and make what they need. This shows me they have prudence and can
prioritize and manage their time properly, and aren't swayed by public opinion
on what the best tool for the job is, but make unbiased comparisons for
themselves.

~~~
sotojuan
Personally I've had more success after switching to a résumé based on this
article:

[http://practicaltypography.com/resumes.html](http://practicaltypography.com/resumes.html)

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pjc50
I did mine in LaTeX back in <checks files> 2001, using basically just

    
    
      \documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{report}
      \usepackage{url,a4wide,pslatex,times}
      \section*{Experience}
      \subsection* ...

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michaelhoffman
As an academic, I have to reformat my CV for almost every grant I apply to. I
created a Jinja2/Pandoc pipeline to ease this process:

[https://bitbucket.org/hoffman/cv/](https://bitbucket.org/hoffman/cv/)

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swillis16
There's a site that I've been using for a while called
[https://www.sharelatex.com/](https://www.sharelatex.com/) which has the
ModernCV template which I use for my resume.

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V-2
This sample CV doesn't look all that nice to me - bullet list, italic, small
caps, three or four different font sizes on one page... effects overload.

Maybe it's just because it's supposed to be a showcase, anyway it looks
cluttered

~~~
mrzool
Thank you for the precious feedback. I'll probably revise it.

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benwaffle
I should really learn latex

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dublinben
I wouldn't consider myself an expert in any way, but it takes less than an
hour to get up to speed with the Latex necessary to compose a nice CV/resume.
Most people spend far more time wrangling with a word processor to get a much
uglier result.

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middleclick
I learned basic Latex, just the minimum necessary to get started. And now I
just Google what I want and use the code verbatim, never bothering to
understand the internals. I thought I was the only one who did this until I
saw that most other people in my university did the same.

~~~
sgeisenh
Honestly, that's what makes LaTeX great. Formatting is decoupled from content.
If you want to make a formatting change, you can Google it and chances are
that somebody else has done the same thing.

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mello151
I've used
[https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cv#.Vi6Bz2SrReU](https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cv#.Vi6Bz2SrReU)
in the past for my wife. I haven't really looked at any other apps but I like
how I can just export PDF directly and not having to deal with
exporting/creating the PDF on my own.

I'd like to learn LaTeX at some point but at this point, CVs are the only
thing I use it for...

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cjbprime
Looks nice! I use this one:
[http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex](http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex)

~~~
tpiha
I use moderncv:
[https://www.ctan.org/pkg/moderncv?lang=en](https://www.ctan.org/pkg/moderncv?lang=en)

~~~
omegote
Me too!

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aorth
Me too! It's even on GitHub and has forks. :)

[https://github.com/alanorth/cv](https://github.com/alanorth/cv)

~~~
tpiha
I'm working on a small Open Source web based generator for it, writing it in
Go. :) It'll be done in a few days, I'll show it on HN.

[https://github.com/tpiha/barecv](https://github.com/tpiha/barecv)

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scrumper
Hmm, seems to require Pandoc? I'd like a nice LaTeX CV template as I can't
find the one I used 15 years ago so therefore can't make changes, but don't
fancy working with (the entirely appropriately named in this case) YAML.

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programminggeek
I've never seen anything easy about using LaTeX.

