Show HN: Resumegen – A single-page LaTeX resume generator | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Resumegen – A single-page LaTeX resume generator

writecodeeveryday.github.io

227 pointsWrtCdEvrydy87 comments

I generate my CV [1] through a setup consisting jade templates, brunch and css. The content of CV is in a yaml [2] file which is compiled to a static html. Code is on github [3] for anyone to use. :)

[1] https://noop.pw/resume

[2] https://github.com/prashnts/prashnts.github.io/blob/develop/...

[3] https://github.com/prashnts/prashnts.github.io/blob/develop/...

robot? haha that's pretty cool

What if you wanted to export this as PDF? Is that straight forward or no?

Just print it as pdf. :)

There's a media query stylesheet for printing.

Really? What do you mean like print the web page?

Whoa that's cool it splits it up into three pages. Pretty sweet.

I use a similar workflow for my resume (really it's just a hand-written html file with some css templates for different section types), but I haven't found "printing to PDF" to be adequate. All the common browsers override your stylesheet with a "printing friendly" one, and do things like putting the URL at the bottom of the page. Instead, I use wkhtmltopdf instead, which is entirely adequate for this purpose.

I have an invoice generation script that outputs html, and I unfortunately have to open it in Chrome and "print to pdf" manually. If you control styling, you can usually set it to look the way you want. Also browser HTML headers/footers can be disabled.

wkhtmltopdf output never looked quite right to me.

System Biology and Reality Mining?!, some of those sound made up (but I'll be curious to research them).

Lot of (way too much) personal information to be sitting publicly on the net, imho.

I've been using this for a few years for my resume since learning LaTex in college.

Online LaTex editor includes previews of documents as you work. https://www.overleaf.com/users/sign_in

And these are some templates on if you just want to copy/paste and make minor edits to personalize.

https://www.rpi.edu/dept/arc/training/latex/resumes/

Their Developers are also on point. I reached out for some help and they gave me a lot of help on this.

Glad to hear it helped! (I'm one of the devs at Overleaf.)

On that note, what are the odds I could get the features I requested in my last email? ;)

1) A POST API that can take a template link and a blob of source and create a preview?

2) A GET request that can take a template link and a blob of source, allow someone to login/register and that doc to their account.

I'd love to get people directly onboarded from this into Overleaf. I'm busy trying to break the LinkedIn TOS to get the entire resume history for the users but I could definitely use those outlined above :D

I'm pretty sure my resume for the last 10 years was from one of those templates!

Nice output. I used to do a lot of interviews, and this is the sort of PDF I want to view, although a bit too crowded, but nonetheless I am okay with a one-page, or a two-page resume with just enough description.

Please never send in a 10-page resume detailing every single technology you have worked with / used at work. You don't show up at someone's doorstep to sell your product by introducing your whole life, do you? Resume is like a simplified pitch deck, make me interested in learning more about your application in 2 minutes. Also, please check your spellings and use consistent formatting.

If you have worked on some side projects, definitely mentions the one you really like or the ones relevant to your job. If you wrote a robot running around the office on April Fool's Day, write that down, I'd be curious. I usually look at people's GitHub profile if a link is mentioned.

My opinion is mine, though. Some HR / recruiter might not like my preference, but I would rather not work for that kind of firm.

> Please never send in a 10-page resume detailing every single technology you have worked with / used at work.

It always surprises me when I hear this attitude. I can't think of another example of people saying, essentially, "Please don't send me relevant information".

My preference is the more detail the better. If I don't need as much information, I can skim over the bits I don't need, but if I don't have enough information to decide whether to take things further (and the typical US-style 1/2 page résumé rarely does), then it's an unnecessary waste of time chasing for that information. I don't want to poll you for information you could have provided ahead of time, and you aren't going to look good compared with the CV that includes relevant experience.

Be succinct, by all means, but don't intentionally redact useful information! This is about providing the information necessary to get you to the next stage, not a teaser to pique interest.

> You don't show up at someone's doorstep to sell your product by introducing your whole life, do you?

That's handled with a summary at the top of your CV or a cover letter you send with your application.

>That's handled with a summary at the top of your CV or a cover letter you send with your application.

There is no need for cover letter in our fields.

Last time I put a resume together I did it in react[1] (because) and I just collapsed older stuff and more detailed stuff, so if someone wants more data it's available, but if they don't want to be overwhelmed its not in their face.

I suspect that the recruiters that I dealt with just used the pdf view

[1] http://pollrobots.github.io/resume.html

Often "more details" correlates strongly with "more noise." If it is relevant, by all means include it. Odds are very high nobody has 10 pages of relevant experience for a standard developer position.

Your opinion is yours, of course. I prefer to have a live conversation with the candidate. I will never be able to learn a person's ability in just 60 minutes, or over a 10-page resume. Do you really need to tell me all the projects and technology you used at work? What I care about is the highlight and give me skills you are most comfortable with. All of them should be relevant to the position you are looking for. Also, CV and resume are not evidence. Interviews can show me whether the person know his / her stuff if I focus on the right questions. I've failed enough candidates I know how some people will make themselves look great on paper, but show up incompetent in real interviews, and the kinds of questions I ask aren't even tricky and don't require some deep understanding of the subject. Real conversation is better than a piece of paper, if I have to weigh the two. The longer your resume is, the more ammunition I have to throw at you during interview. I found more liars than I expected I would have.

A CV isn't a replacement for an interview, it's a tool to cut down on the number of interviews you have to conduct by giving you better information to make the decision about who to interview.

I never said it is a replacement. I said resume should be consice and get to the point. I have tons of experiences in my area of expertise, but I am not gong to sell you an autobiography of my whole career, because I know the highlight of my career. I also don't need to know your experience from 20 years ago, last 5-8 years would be enough.

> I never said it is a replacement.

No, you were responding as if that was what I was saying.

I'm struggling to understand your point when you say that a CV isn't evidence and people can look good on paper but not in person then. That's not an argument against having more information up front to help you decide whether to interview somebody or not.

Because i don't need to know everything up front. I just need to know enough about you to tell me why I should consider interviewing you and enough for me to prepare questions. I don't run interview for 15 minutes. I run between 1-2 hours interview per candidate. If you try to oversell yourself to me, you are trying too hard. I still go through the interview if I think you are the right candidate to interview even if you did send me a 50-page resume, but that doesn't mean I don't want a briefer CV.

So let me ask you the, is it okay for you to get a 20-page resume then instead of 10? How about this, someone with 40 years of experience and now you get a 40-page resume.

Where is this 15 minute interview idea coming from? I run interviews for 1–2 hours as well. I just don't want to waste that time on large numbers of candidates when I can qualify a smaller number more quickly by having better information up front.

Nobody actually does this, but yes, a 40 page CV would be fine as long as it had a cover letter or summary and it was laid out in a way that I could skim it. I'd prefer the 40 page CV to a 1 page résumé any day, because the 1 page résumé doesn't have what I need to make an informed decision. I can skim a 40 page CV in minutes without chasing anybody for more information and without conducting a 1–2 hour interview.

You've still not provided an argument against more information, just said that you don't value it. There's literally no downside as far as I can see. If you're not interested in certain details then you can just skim over them.

Nice work!!

Some thoughts:

- For my taste the sections/fields are not flexible enough. There are a few big ones missing, that I have on my résumé or have seen on others. E.g. Projects, Open Source, Involvement, Writing, Speaking Engagements, References... (there are a few more, for a complete list, have a look at the schema I'm using for ProgrammerCV at http://programmercv.com/resume-schema, which is open source btw)

- Getting the output as latex is a really nice idea. I'm working on a tool to extract résumé data from linkedin, xing etc. (http://programmercv.com/resume-exporter) and I want to offer export to multiple formats like .docs, .pdf, .html etc... and I'm already seeing that its quite difficult to offer flexibility and at the same time, garantuee some output quality. I guess latex could help... I will add it to my todo :)

- As someone else commented on, for my taste the template feels to cramped. stretching infos over 2-3 pages is preferable over to much on one page, imo. But luckily there are quite a few high quality latex résumé templates out there

Might have to hit up your LinkedIn extraction. Their new developer API is dick and gives you none of the info you need for a resume.

yes, I agree! thats exactly why I wrote it: I hate that they try to lock users in. That résumé data is mine, and I should be able to export in any format I want. Instead every service tries to lock their users in, and for every other website I use, I need to reenter the same stuff...

If you want to export to multiple formats, pandoc will be your best friend - http://pandoc.org

Just curious, why one page? It seems to compress a ton of information into a small area, which I would think makes it less appealing. If I were looking at the example resume, it would just be too much. I always heard 3 pages was the right length, first one for the hooks, and then the other 2 for the detailed history. Is that different from others experiences?

In the tech industry, the recommendation unless you have 10+ years experience is a one page resume with all of your info. If you have 10-15+ years experience, you can do 2 pages but most HR departments won't read beyond the first anyways.

I don't think this is true. At least not in my experience.

I do a lot of hiring of fresh out of university people. The amount of 2-3 page resumes with their 9th grade achievements astonishes me.

Something like this format certainly makes sense for fresh out of Univeristy, since they should really not be going that long. But seems much less useful for someone with 5+ years of experience and several jobs. But I am definitely interested to see what other HR departments are looking for these days. Is this format attractive as someone doing hiring?

1 page for people with no to little experience.

2 pages for everyone else.

I already had a solid two pages, though definitely not this dense, after 5 years. And have kept it at 3 pages now for a few years. I am sure it could have initially fit on this one page, if I wanted to compress it to this format. But to me it just seems like its too dense for an HR department to even review. I would much rather have the important hooks on that one page, nicely spaced and not overwhelming, and then if they are interested they can move on. But none of the advice I have relied on for this has been from the Tech Industry, its just been general advice. So its very interesting to see another perspective.

Very true. Also consider: The "screening" phase is the toughest part to get past. When someone has 400 resumes on their desk to quickly go through, they are going to barely scan maybe the top 1/3 of the first page of your resume, and I guarantee they won't look past page 1. You need to have your strongest pitch front and center on the very top of page 1.

Your resume is the first hint a company gets about your communication skills, including your ability to edit and summarize. Unless you've got heaps and heaps of experience, 2+ pages can send the message "trouble editing".

The strongest pitch is when they turn the page and realize you've got numerous real world experiences in what they want. Even more than what's on the first page ;)

The convention in the U.S. is a one-page resume and a cover letter.

A resume in the U.S. is not like a CV in Europe. It is an abbreviated list of highlights that are relevant to the position you are applying for.

nice work, some feedback: would be nice to have a sample output file at the beginning in order to see what you'd get at the end

If you click on the Deedy Resume, you can see the initial template, but this was designed to use Overleaf for real time rendering so you could see it as you filled it out, which was never implemented.

Does the output include the tex file itself? The main reason I chose to use LaTeX for my C.V. aside from the obvious typesetting capabilities is how easy it is to edit and source control it.

The output is the raw latex source and a link to Overleaf to the template.

This is a starter for people who don't want to write for two hours to get started.

Very nice, I didn't know about the Deedy Resume template. I'll give it a try, to see if I can squeeze my 2 pages (modern-cv) into a one page.

Overleaf has an entire section on resume templates but I just picked my favorite.

This looks really nice - great to have a nice builder for the latex. Would be cool if it was possible to add your own sections.

I've been collecting a few latex resume links for those interested:

https://www.rpi.edu/dept/arc/training/latex/resumes/

https://github.com/mrzool/cv-boilerplate

https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV

It's public, fork and make your changes. I'm open to suggestions.

www.github.com/writecodeeveryday/writecodeeveryday.github.io

My final idea is something that allows you to pick the template at the end and uploads to Overleaf under your Google account.

Be sure to check out the moderncv package.

https://www.ctan.org/pkg/moderncv

http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/documents/curriculum-vitae

Works great! Very nice as a "starting point" for further customization, for people like me who are still learning LaTeX. Comments:

1. The experience/research section is pretty cramped, at least on safari. Maybe take advantage of the whole browser window rather than putting it in a frame?

2. I may have missed it but couldn't find a way to delete fields mistakenly added. Output just includes blank data that can be deleted later so not a big deal.

Overall cool!

Yeah, I wanted Jquery steps but couldn't make the sections expand downwards.

There is no way to delete but Ill figure something out tonight along with a LinkedIn scraper.

Cool, good luck. Like I said totally useful. I was literally thinking to myself just this week "I should learn TeX by using a simple document like my resume, but don't know where to start." Spooky like you read my mind....

The first person to port LaTeX to WASM will be hailed as the messiah.

Including the complete set of packages provided by texlive-full of course. :)

"A Script on this page is causing it to run slow".

Check network inspector tab texlive-full.js - 2.4Gb.

Still less than some SPA.

The actually TeX binary is actually quite small - it is little more than a macro processor. The other packages could actually be loaded on demand and kept in a local cache.

Beyond a basic set of packages, this is what MikTex does, and why I prefer it to TexLive on Windows.

Is it a sign of dumb or a sign of genius not to know what WASM is?

It took me a minute, but probably Webassembly

WebAssembly. The spiritual successor to asm.js for representing an easier compile target to browsers from C/C++.

In any case, the sheer size of LaTeX will make such an endeavour probably not very useful (Download 1 GiB to render a document? Probably not.)

Oh yeah, I've heard of Web assembly, just not the acronym.

Almost all the mass in a TeX installation is in the fonts and documentation. If you just need a TeX engine (lualatex) and use system fonts, it's just a MB or two.

In asm.js (excluding fonts and documentation) it's about 3 MB https://github.com/manuels/texlive.js/blob/master/pdftex-wor...

> Download 1 GiB to render a document? Probably not.

Any day now we'll be downloading 1 GB in order to read an article, so just give it time …

they you can create a WASMey

It wouldn't take much to bring this to WASM:

http://manuels.github.io/texlive.js/

See previous story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5083361

Remember this only generates the LaTeX source. Overleaf does the heavy lifting for rendering.

What could you mean by that? texlive compiles.

The original project only generates LaTeX, it doesn't compile or output.

How does Overleaf compare to Sharelatex?

From what I've seen Sharelatex limits collaborators where as Overleaf limits the file size.

Isn't there a WASM backend to LLVM already?

But, do you want to render a resulting .pdf? If it's going into a canvas, I can see it taking some serious work.

(I think I did never write something as hard to parse for lay-people for explaining so simple an idea. There's something very wrong with the above comment.)

Javascript-based PDF renderers exist already - Firefox uses one by default.

https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/

Scored my first IT Sec job by impressing the hiring manager with a resume type-set in LaTeX.

Should probably escape #'s (in the case of C#)

Yeah. I saw that in testing and never got around to it.

tl;dr: it is a big form where you enter your personal details. The form is slidinated (pagination with slides).

At the end, you get a button to copy some latex, which you are instructed to paste in some website which applies a template and you get a preview back. You can get a PDF as well. Example here https://l.awalgarg.me/oobqng33.pdf.

Seems handy I guess for getting a starting point.

I made this but with markdown a while ago, https://github.com/awalgarg/cv-maker.

11/10 for "how do I remove this thing"

i write particularly bad resumes (as my colleagues have told me) and I find resume critiques dreadful. A tool like that produces the basic item is truly helpful.

You actually get the source so you can modify it as you get your critiques. You may find moving the sections around helps when doing critiques.

EPIC FAIL! You just failed all your applications because of this poor template. Allow me to explain why...

What is the single most important line in a resume?

That's the job you do, like "FULL STACK WEB DEVELOPER", which is the title of the resume, going on top, bold big font. That's the first thing a reader needs to understand, what do you do and what are you applying for.

This resume generator doesn't allow to write a title.

As someone who does a lot of interviewing, I can confirm this is NOT how everyone feels.

Do you do the screening too? Are you sometimes handed resumes without further information?

Answer yes to any of these questions and you'll realize that you can't do your job if the resume doesn't have a title. (Unless you spend 10 minutes to decode it). You simply don't know what's the job of the candidate and can't forward to any team/manager.

You can look at the Employment/Work Experience and see his current (and past) roles. A good resume has this information easily available that you can get to it within 2-3 seconds.

Shall I remind you that the resume before you might be for a secretary and the resume after you might be a construction worker trying to reconvert. The resume pipeline is not limited to developers or your team ;)

Not to mention the challenge with people writing the meaningless official titles from their companies and people having 10 years of experience in different roles.

You can demand that everyone involved in recruiting scan your resume for 10 minutes and understand the last 10 years of your life. Most likely, that won't happen and your resume will be discarded half the time.

> This resume generator doesn't allow to write a title.

Please fork the project and commit a pull request.

No thank you.

Bold statement, here in EU that's not the case. As long as work experience is one of the first categories it's fine. They need to read that section anyway. Your latest job titles are listed there in plain sight. To be honest, there is a huge scarcity for higher educated software engineers, and even huge for software architects. They will read your resume, they will read it twice if they find as much as a single line of experience in there. This is the era of the "move to digital" and enterprises finding out software engineers are no longer necessary costs for hire. You will get multiple messages per day here in NL for options all over Europe.

Oh, you could bring your message in a different tone you know, would have made your post stronger tuning the attitude down from 11 to 10.

P.s. Don't know about others but I giggle each time I see full stack web developer. This time in caps even.

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