
Show HN: A LaTeX-based resume building app - soccer3056
http://www.expresscv.co
======
vmurthy
Per update from the author " Thanks for letting me know Have taken the site
down until this is fixed" . Basically, the author is fixing an issue wherein
resumes were serially numbered and anyone could potentially see anyone else's
resumes. If you see a 502 error, this might be the reason :-)

~~~
TheChaplain
For others thinking of releasing a new project; if you need to take down your
site, make sure you display a page with Twitter or a emailaddress form
"Contact me when the site is up again"

~~~
darkarmani
Yes. Either a load balancer sitting as a placeholder in front of it, or in
this case just create an Nginx 50x error page saying that.

I imagine that nginx server sitting there is a reverse-proxy, so put a nice
error page for when the upstream server errors out.

------
ColinWright
If the first thing you require is a login, I'll instantly bounce. All I have
to go on is an annoying animation and a claim that you create a professional
looking CV.

My instant reaction was simply to close it and move on, but I thought I'd at
least come here to tell you why.

I've upvoted the submission because I want to encourage others to provide
their opinions, which might be different from mine.

 _Added in edit:_ And I use neither Google+ nor LinkedIn, so I couldn't sign
in anyway.

~~~
soccer3056
Thanks a lot for your feedback! I'll definitely work on your suggestions.

It's my first project, so I am still learning things

~~~
ColinWright
Massive kudos in getting something up, running, and available for people to
use - I'm sure you'll learn a lot. One thing you'll learn is that the core
product is about 10% of the whole experience.

As others have mentioned, if you take it down you should have a place-holder
so that people know it will be back, and so it doesn't overly hurt your search
engine rankings.

------
jjjbokma
I made a LaTeX template for Pandoc, so one can write a resume in Markdown (and
some YAML) and generate a PDF (or LaTeX). It's on GitHub:
[https://github.com/john-bokma/resume-pandoc](https://github.com/john-
bokma/resume-pandoc)

It needs a LaTeX install, and Pandoc, of course as explained in
[http://johnbokma.com/blog/2017/05/17/installing-latest-
pando...](http://johnbokma.com/blog/2017/05/17/installing-latest-pandoc-on-
ubuntu.html) The instructions are for Ubuntu 17.04 but work for 19.04 as well
(tested this weekend).

Example resume: [http://castleamber.com/documents/perl-programmer-john-
bokma-...](http://castleamber.com/documents/perl-programmer-john-bokma-
resume.pdf) (PDF).

~~~
cocoa19
The convention is to write a 1 page resume. Your example is too verbose.

~~~
chrisseaton
It varies by country and industry. Six pages is fine in my experience.

~~~
cosmodisk
Which country is it? With 6 pages one needs to be a phd with 20 years of
experience and plenty to show, otherwise 1-2 pages max.

~~~
hprotagonist
My current principal investigator has a 40-odd page CV. They’ve been doing
research since the mid-70s: hundreds of invited talks, papers, posters, book
chapters, awards, etc. take up a lot of space.

~~~
adenadel
This highlights the difference between a resume and a CV.

~~~
chrisseaton
Right, but in the UK, for example, we don't do resumes, only CVs.

~~~
mruts
Are you saying that everyone in the UK is an academic?

~~~
chrisseaton
> Are you saying that everyone in the UK is an academic?

Does it honestly seem likely to you that that's what I'm saying?

No.

I'm saying people in the UK don't write resumes. They write CVs. Whether
they're an academic or not. And they're generally a couple of pages at the
very least.

I get that's different to how it is where you are - but it's normal for things
to be different in different places around the world.

------
gpestll
Hi, there's a major problem with the URLS of CV's, all are available to
everyone as they're numbered in order and there's no permission locks.

~~~
soccer3056
Thanks for letting me know Have taken the site down until this is fixed

~~~
Findeton
Just use UUIDs

~~~
jjjbokma
> Do not assume that UUIDs are hard to guess; they should not be used as
> security capabilities

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10631806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10631806)

~~~
snazz
Use a crypto-quality PRNG (/dev/urandom is fine) and you should be fine,
especially since the time it takes to brute-force URL parameters is very high
(network latency). Just about anything is better than sequential numbers here.

------
hprotagonist
Personally, I

    
    
      \documentclass[10pt,sans]{moderncv}  
    

and then go from there. I’m leery of keeping my CV or details on it anywhere
but a private git repo.

~~~
neilv
LaTeX or TeX is a good way, especially if you're sending select people the
PDFs directly, not putting it into some awful resume farm that tries to
process it into some other form (and then someone possibly uses the badly-
processed resumes as an excuse to cull, or resumes simply never show up in
searches, or processed resumes look bad when someone sees it).

My current one, which I'm determined to keep to one page, starts like the
below, in which I often have to tweak things like page margins and vertical
gaps (until recently, it was 11pt, and I'd prefer 12pt). I also recently
experimented with putting everything in a single chronology, including
degrees, and dropping headings, with no separate skills section. I have no
idea what's better, so I'm just reconciling the resume with personal style,
which says one page, schools are a privilege rather than a bragging point,
experience is more important than keyword spamming, and I don't want a
keyword-searched job anyway.

    
    
      \documentclass[10pt,letterpaper]{article}
      \usepackage[letterpaper,margin=1in,top=0.5in,bottom=0.3in]{geometry}
      \usepackage[scaled]{helvet}
      \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
      % \usepackage[none]{hyphenat}
      \pagestyle{empty}
      \setlength{\tabcolsep}{0em}
    
      \newcommand{\Section}[1]{%
        \vspace{12pt}
        \noindent{\large\textbf{\textsf{#1}}}}
    
      \newenvironment{HeaderDateDesc}[2]{%
        \vspace{6pt}
        \noindent\begin{tabular*}{\linewidth}{l@{\extracolsep{\fill}}r}
          \textbf{\textsf{#1}} & \textsf{#2} \\
        \end{tabular*}
        {}}
    
      \newcommand{\DescBreak}[0]{%
        \vspace{4pt}\noindent}
    
      \newcommand{\Caps}[1]{%
        {\small #1}}
    
      % http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/4302/prettiest-way-to-typeset-c-cplusplus
      \newcommand{\Cplusplus}{%
        C\nolinebreak\hspace{-.05em}\raisebox{.4ex}{\tiny\bf +}\nolinebreak\hspace{-.10em}\raisebox{.4ex}{\tiny\bf +}}
    
      \newcommand{\CandCplusplus}{C/\Cplusplus{}}
    
      \begin{document}
    
      \begin{center}
      {\textbf{\textsf{Jane Smith}}}\\
      {\small \textsf{Cambridge, Mass., \Caps{USA}}}\\
      \texttt{jsmith@example.com}
      \end{center}
    
      %\vspace{-16pt}
      %\Section{EXPERIENCE}
    
      \begin{HeaderDateDesc}{Principal Engineer, Example LLC}{2012--Present}
      ...

~~~
pseingatl
Could you post the rest of the tex file?

~~~
neilv
Just add these two lines to the end (and unindent the entire file 2 spaces
that were added for HN markup), and it should work with LaTeX, and then you
can just make more instances of the `HeaderDateDesc` begin-end part, for each
experience/degree:

    
    
      \end{HeaderDateDesc}
      \end{document}
    

If your LaTeX install is missing some packages, you might need to Google for
how to add them.

------
jedberg
I used LaTex in college, to typeset all my essays. I also used it in my
creative writing class, and people were amazed that I was able to add line
numbers to my work so we could easily discuss it by referring to line numbers!
I'm pretty sure I got better grades in all my writing based classes based
solely on the fact that I used LaTex to typeset my work.

The last time I wrote a resume[0] I used LaTex to do it too, and I provide the
LaTex source[1] on my website. I've seen bits of it show up in other people's
resumes, which is exactly what I want to happen! But what was funny was how
often people would say "boy this looks so clean and professional!". Pretty
sure I got some interviews just because of how "pretty" my resume was.

[0]
[https://www.jedberg.net/Jeremy_Edberg_Resume.pdf](https://www.jedberg.net/Jeremy_Edberg_Resume.pdf)

[1]
[https://www.jedberg.net/Jeremy_Edberg_Resume.tex](https://www.jedberg.net/Jeremy_Edberg_Resume.tex)

~~~
beefhash
> I've seen bits of it show up in other people's resumes, which is exactly
> what I want to happen!

Shouldn't you attach some kind of license to the TeX file, then? Right now, it
just holds your copyright and everyone stealing parts of it is presumably in
copyright violation.

~~~
jedberg
Good point, never even thought about that! I'll update it with an appropriate
license. Thanks for pointing that out.

------
leemailll
Your site doesn't offer a screenshot of the final file or pdf of it. At least
make it better than
[https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/tagged/cv](https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/tagged/cv)
to encourage people to jump in.

------
alien1993
I had to recently redo my CV, I made the previous one in InDesign but I needed
to work on it both on Linux and Windows so I aimed for something easily
editable and portable.

I tried creating in markdown and converting it to pdf with pandoc but the
result wasn't that great since I could not style it, I discarded LaTeX too
since I didn't really have the time to learn a new tool.

After a bit I settled on HTML and SCSS, I also written a small Dart script to
compile to CSS using lib-sass, converting to pdf is really easy since I just
print the page directly from the browser. While writing it I also discovered
that there are certain CSS media queries just for printing a page, I used it
hide certain elements when saving to pdf so I can have just one source for
both browser and print.

If you're in a rush I suggest you take this approach into consideration.

If you want to have a look here's the links to the hosted version and the
source.

[https://www.silvanocerza.com/resume/](https://www.silvanocerza.com/resume/)

[https://github.com/silvanocerza/resume/](https://github.com/silvanocerza/resume/)

------
uoaei
Careful!

I had a very hard time getting interviews for the longest time. It turned out
that the main problem was my LaTeX PDF resume and the class file I had made
for it. The automatic parsers attached to every online application had a very
hard time extracting the information appropriately, and I believe as a
consequence that that information never made it to hiring managers' eyeballs.

If submitting to online applications, either use a very simply formatted LaTeX
class file or do it in Word. Everything reads Word now, since it's basically
fancy XML.

~~~
pseingatl
HR systems are automated. If you apply using the system, beautiful LaTeX
formatting doesn't matter.

------
francis-io
I went down this route in the past using things like
[https://jsonresume.org/](https://jsonresume.org/) and even latex to create
lovely PDF outputs. The thing is, most people want the least friction in
viewing your Resume/CV and the best results I get now is from a public link to
a Google Doc. This lets anyone view in the browser, copy and paste is not an
issue and the can export it as doc/pdf directly if they wish.

~~~
tombert
This is true, though I've found personally that there is an unintended
niceness to having your resume down in LaTeX/PDF: recruiters can't break the
formatting by adding their ugly logo on the top.

This probably is an outlier, but about 6 years ago, I had a resume that I
wrote in the typical .docx format, a recruiter added their logo on the top,
all the bullets became misaligned, and during the interview, the interviewer
actually asked why I would submit such an unprofessional thing for a place
that I expected to work (though he said it more politely than that). Lord
knows how many people saw it and turned up even giving me an interview because
of it.

After that incident, I redid it in LaTeX, and whenever I talk to recruiters
who ask for my resume in a Word/Google Docs format, I tell them "I don't own a
copy of MS Word, but here's a link to the TeX source!". I've never had anyone
ever push back after that, and since most non-engineers don't know how to use
TeX, they don't break the formatting.

------
pseingatl
HR systems are automated. The system parses your submitted cv and enters the
info into a database. Do you think a human being looks at your cv? Unlikely.
You need something more to get out of the slush pile. Like, making sure all of
the words in the job description are in your cv. Every. Single. One. There may
be other techniques. Every system (can be) (has already been) gamed.
Frustration with automated HR systems is what drives so many to try to contact
individuals inside a company. Do you know how many applicants Facebook gets
for an advertised position? 10,000 or more. Even for non-computer related
positions, such as real estate acquisition for their new data center project.
There are simply too many cv's to review by decision makers, so they don't get
reviewed. The same applies for all the large tech companies. If you get a
formal, face to face interview, by all means bring several copies of your
nicely-formatted cv. But remember: a cv is advertising. Especially at the
early stages.

------
pjc50
For comparison, I set myself up with a LaTeX CV about 20 years ago and have
used it ever since. For those occasions that required Word I pasted it from
the PDF. I also have a small Makefile to "build" it.

[https://flatline.org.uk/cv.tex.txt](https://flatline.org.uk/cv.tex.txt)

The trouble with this is resisting the temptation to make it look ""just
right"" and instead go with minimally-altered defaults.

------
i_are_smart
I used to write my resume with LaTeX, but the last time I was job hunting I
decided to take a different approach - now I keep my resume as a single
semantic HTML document, and I apply useful categories and tags (as classes) to
each bit of job experience/accomplishment/education I have listed, and I have
a bit of javascript that makes it easy to hide portions from the printed
version (via css print styles).

I do it this way because it allows me to keep all of my experience and history
in one single place, while also making it easy to create reduced subsets
tailored to specific jobs.

------
rishiloyola
Not able to access it. Nginx error - 502 Bad Gateway

------
LocalPCGuy
Since I can't see this while it's being updated, question: Does it use the
JsonResume standard? Even if there is an UI for building the resume, storing
(and potentially allowing uploading of) the data in a standard that currently
exists seems like a good idea.

------
stevekemp
It is a shame that it has been down almost since it was posted, I see from
your history that you were looking to sell the site eight months ago. Is that
still the case, if not what changed?

------
blacksoil
502 gateway :( too much traffic?

~~~
philshem
OP took page down because of insecure permissions due to sequences ids

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20163506](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20163506)

------
theasteve
This link is broken

------
angvp
502 :/

------
ezconnect
The spelling made me think of another latex and was really confused on how he
did it

~~~
kowdermeister
Laser engraving :) It would make a sick CV, but better suited for name cards.

