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Universal Resume Template

github.com

160 pointswebpraktikos51 comments

Last time I looked for work, I made a nice CV in PDF and I put it on a custom website with a simple URL I could say over the phone.

People still asked for it to be emailed in DOC format.

Let's just say I experimented with the then current version of Word to see what would happen if I renamed that PDF to a DOC extension.

That's funny. It's an allegory for the hirer / hiree intelligence ratio.

I have no idea how true it is but what I've always been told is never to give someone a word-processor format resume as they will then turn around and use it in hiring/recruitment scams.

I've heard that advice as well, but I have a hard time explaining how it would be all that important. PDFs are editable, after all, you'd just have to spend a few minutes looking up a tool. So that would just cut out the absolute laziest or most incurious of scammers, right? How much value could there really be in that?

harder to automate, which is the real reason why companies don't like pdf. every company/hiring startup is making tools to just feed your word docs into the system and then highlight candidates based on whatever the company values

> every company/hiring startup is making tools to just feed your word docs

Whereas pdftotext tools have been there since forever.

I've written tools to try and extract text from docx files programmatically (not CVs but citations and footnote citations) and I seriously doubt "hiring startups" wouldn't just ask you to fill a web form.

(As a matter of fact, I'm low key job hunting and what I've seen typically is that the systems try to extract the text from my non-standard formatting latex-made pdf, and then pre-fill a form. The form is usually right but needs fixes here and there. It's a good approach.)

Yeah, but it’s still more work, which has to be done by humans and not automated.

The thing they hate most in life is to be forced to do actual human work, especially when they are processing all those résumés and CVs.

I mean, they have to feed the machine somehow, and you’re making them do real work during that process?!?

The biggest problem is that recruitment agencies and/or HR can mangle it before it gets to the people that matter. I interviewed someone for C skill and halfway through they (very politely) interrupted to point out that they had only worked with C++. The recruitment agency had 'helpfully' amended C++ to C/C++.

This is why I no longer talk to recruiters. The ones I get at least, like to turn my resume into keyword soup regardless of the truth.

Sounds like you found an effective strategy to weed out ineffective companies (or at least those w/ HR departments putting unnecessary requirements on people they want). It may not seem representative of the entire company, but like many things, first impressions are often accurate.

Or perhaps it's the companies weeding out ineffective candidates that cannot adapt and figure out how to provide a very common format such as a Word doc.

Exactly. In an equal-leverage job market, the unnecessary requirement makers and the capitulators deserve each other.

As a counterpoint, I have heard this before but have never had someone ask for a doc file. I never used agencies or recruiters, so maybe that plays a role?

This looks nice and having it produce websites and pdfs is surely useful.

Some hopefully constructive criticism:

- The light gray, low contrast theme makes it harder to read and also look washed out.

- Fonts and kerning tend to be handled better in latex, e.g. moderncv

- Having a non-open source license is of course your choice, but makes this quite unattractive to use (is it still going to be around in a few years? Will anyone maintain non-free software if you lose interest?)

Hey, thanks for commenting.

1. Body text has the contrast ratio of 7.52 under WCAG 2.0 standards (https://contrast-ratio.com/#%234a5568-on-white) which is within the optimal range for legibility. On paper, the text is 100% black. On the screen, that can be too much, so I used grays. Labels are lighter because I wanted to treat them as supporting text, not main.

2. This is primarily for the Web. So, HTML/CSS. I didn’t know about LaTeX before, interesting.

3. It’s free, and you can modify it, maintain it, etc. The only restriction is that you can’t use it for commercial purposes (e.g., page builder). More info here https://github.com/WebPraktikos/universal-resume#license

Be careful with LaTeX. It’s easy to get sucked into it.

Just like programming in general.

Staring into the Abyss. Don’t get sucked into it. :D

LaTeX is good stuff, very powerful but also, as parent said, it's a deep rabbit hole.

That said, Overleaf is a good online template & LaTeX editor. Kind of an easy way into it, similar to WYSIWYG HTML editors.

And then you start playing around with TikZ...

LaTeX is really great. My CV is a 7 kB file with embedded fonts. My thesis is 1.2 MB with embedded fonts, 60 vector images and hyperlinks (references and ToC). LaTex is a serious amount of labor but it makes the best documents.

I have my own responsive, displayagnostic, offlinecapable cv and think everyone should have his own, because it is a platform for showing off your skills.

My skills aren't front-end web development.

backend developer? make an API now that would be a creative resume one could query nizmow/education or explore experiences endpoint so that one can navigate freely back and forth between experiences and skills. I mean, painters did this ages ago, putting everything they can do on a single frame and sending them to galleries or mecenates as gifts and whatnot

it is of course just to get the foot in, you can then have your black and white skill table for the HR drone to fill up the necessary db.

I'd happily submit my CV as json... :)

That’s the thing, in general you are not chosen by the relevance of your resume. Resume building is more SEO than showcasing relevant skills. If you can min max your SEO to get a conversation with someone who matters in your hiring process, then it works.

I would not put my data on the wild web, especially phone and address.

That sounds like a great way to show off your skills in over-engineering and tightening screws with a hammer.

There is

Believe it or not, HN

More to IT then web apps... (to mis-quote Ross from Friends, Front OR Back :P)

Yeah sorry, none of this is a good idea. If you are in marketing or something like that it may benefit you to get a little creative with resume formatting, but even that has limits. Stick to PDF resumes if you must do something fancy like that include it as a link to your resume. When I have 20-200 resume's to sift through the fact that I have to somehow store a link to your resume, while everyone else's is a PDF in folder that I can easily peruse at any time will work against you, not for you.

As a front end designer, you should understand, fancy and flashy is not the same thing as good UX. When I have to compare a bunch of candidates a predictable format is far better UX than whatever "creative" way you've chosen to try to demonstrate your skills, and what you've really demonstrated to me is you've failed to consider the needs of your user.

Edit: This should have gone on the GP's comment, but applies here too.

did you miss the second paragraph or?

I don't understand why I need npm.

Because the application is written in Node, and it uses dependencies? If you'd prefer something not written in Node, I'm sure you can find other options.

I thought it was a web page template? Why would it need a back-end?

Tailwind CSS generates CSS from JS config file containing a design system. For example, several custom sizes are generated to multiple utility classes for specifying margins and paddings.

Reminds me of Standard Resume. Nice work.

https://standardresume.co

Thanks leerob! It's nice to see more resume templates focus on typography and readability, instead of distracting visuals, charts, pictures, infographics, etc. Standard Resume has received praise from many recruiters and hiring managers for its similar styling.

If you like the typography centric design of the URT, but are looking for a hosted solution with an easy to use web based editor and style customizer, definitely check out https://standardresume.co. If you want full control of your hosting and styling, URT is the best option I am aware of.

For comparison:

Standard Resume: https://rsm.io/dana-andrews

Universal Resume Template: https://universal-resume-pages.netlify.com/

Also, Universal Resume Template is better for print and pdf.

What makes it better for print and pdf?

I found myself most curious about the meat-themed lorem ipsum generator...looks great though!

Edit: Perhaps it was Bacon Ipsum? https://baconipsum.com/

Yes :) Speaking of which, I’m just about to prepare some eggs with bacon and ground beef.

I'm a little surprised that the multipage demo doesn't have a working print stylesheet. Granted, most of these resumes won't be printed out but I think they're minimal enough where they would look great printed out. A few well placed page-breaks [1] would fix it right up.

[1] https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/p/page-break/

Of course it has → https://i.imgur.com/pUPiQjn.gifv

You probably didn’t set up page format properly. In Chrome, by expanding More Settings, change Page Size to A4 or Letter. More info at https://github.com/WebPraktikos/universal-resume#printing.

Is there a way to convert this into word (.docx) easily

In Chrome, you can save it as .pdf by Right-click → Print. By expanding More Settings, change Page Size to A4 or Letter. Next, maybe find a .pdf to .docx converter.

PDFs are notoriously hard to convert to anything else. Imagine a web page where every single character is positioned absolutely relative to the `body` element: This is how PDF layout works.

It's easier when the PDF also contains HTML tags. So your approach may actually work though it's kinda silly.

Pandoc[1] is a better solution.

[1] https://pandoc.org/

Pandoc is pretty great.

I didn’t know that. I’ll certainly research that.

Let me just say, I really appreciate your sample text!

Nice work! Unfortunately there are some differences between the way it renders/prints in Firefox and in Chrome.

Text is a bit fatter in Firefox — that is, takes up more space. Please remember to choose A4 or Letter size by navigating to Properties → Advanced → Paper Size.

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