Why I do my resume in LaTeX
toofishes.net
toofishes.net
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.
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).
It's very hard to source candidates. Job boards are more or less useless for companies advertising direct, as they're dominated by recruiters (who pay less for job adverts as they're bulk buying and can afford to spend more).
Recruiters are also good at getting passive candidates by cold calling candidates whose details they've obtained through slightly iffy routes. For example a company won't buy the phone book of a competitor from a disgruntled employee and then start cold calling their staff to hire them away, but a third party recruiter will.
I'm trying to raise financing at the moment to build a startup that will provide an alternative solution (a job site with intelligent candidate/job matching using the kind of techniques dating sites use).
If anyone wants to see my pitch deck feel free to email me (even if you're not an investor, happy to share with anyone who's not a direct competitor).
I sent you an email regarding your startup since it interests me on an academic level and I'd love to learn a little more.
That said, almost 100% of the non-college hires I made were either personal recommendations from other members on the team or people whom I directly contacted after seeing their name pop up repeatedly in the context of interesting things.
The root problem is that many places don't measure performance and so you get the same problems which are endemic in marketing where successes are credited to people but failures are seen as systemic. At the last few places, our recruiters literally failed to provide a single qualified candidate (or even strong resume) but this was usually excused as a tough market - and while good people are always in short supply, taking the 30% cut which normally goes to the recruiter and giving it to the person would certainly help.
The one contact I had with a recruiting company (big brand name) was when I applied to a job, I interviewed with some technical people at the company, they decided to hire me and they told the recruiting company to tell me I was hired. Some months went by, I got no message, so I took another job, and just for the sake of it I wrote the CTO to tell them they could've at least sent me a note that they weren't hiring me. Turns out the recruiting company misspelled my email address and they were still waiting for my answer and the position was unfilled. Everyone was apologetic but I couldn't go back as I committed to something else.
Actual people I'm interested in have zero certs, may have zero diplomas, wear ragged jeans and flip-flops and beards, but they have friggin' code to show and run Linux (or some other Unix) on their personal computer. Anything else than displaying obvious ability to write code is meaningless to me. Since I explained this was the profiles I'm looking for, I didn't received any more résumés from recruiters.
So it all depends very much on the sort of job you're looking for. My guess is if you're an hacker and you want to work in a startup, never mind the recruiters. Making a latex résumé is fine, because of the added bonus points.
Certs provide a baseline - if you have an MSCE it means you can use Windows, nothing more. For some positions it's a means of covering your arse which is useful when you're in a big company.
Personally I prefer to judge people by their deeds rather than their words, or in this case letters. That's why we have a fairly gruelling test for positions these days.
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}
Pdftex is currently the standard Tex engine for the two main Tex distributions, Texlive and Miktex.
:-) TBH, though, there's just no comparison for producing nicely-formatted research papers. Especially in that eye-straining, dual-column, 9pt ACM conference format.
- 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.
- 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.
Pdftex (the default Tex engine) supports this. Both Xetex and Luatex do as well, and both of these additionally assume UTF8 as the input encoding and allow you to use True Type and OTF fonts directly.
2. Optional DOC/DOCX output (even if it supports just a subset of the program's capabilities)
igneous4 mentioned Pandoc, which supports RTF as an output format, which is as good as doc/docx for importing text with basic formatting into Word. Pandoc also supports Context. If you want to move the other way, there is docx2tex, which is the best Word to Latex converter.
3. Bibliography management built-in (no separate ancient BibTeX)
I think there's nothing satisfactory here for Latex. You might like to look at Jabref. With Context, the automatic build process makes the invocation of Bibtex invisible. There are many make-like tools for Latex, none are seamless.
4. Command-line searching and importing from Pubmed / Google Scholar / etc. built-in
Again, nothing built-in, but Zotero will do what you want.
5. Bibliography styles can be created/edited by normal humans
Again, nothing adequate here. Try looking at Biblatex. I hand/regex edit .bbl files if I have special bib style needs.
6. Syntax closer to Markdown or reStructuredText, to enhance readability of source file (and maybe shrink the learning curve)
Tex's markup is actually nice. I often wish I could use Texisms when I am editing Markdown, etc. Pandoc allows you to convert between all of these.
7. Program is smaller than 1.6 GB (the size of the default MacTeX distro).
Most of which is fonts. If you have less than voracious font needs, or use TTF/OTF (via. Luatex/Xetex), you can get away with a small fraction of this. Try a more lightweight Texlive installation, and find out what you need.
The hardest part for me has been dealing with bibliography data - No surprise. Bibliography management used to be a relative strength of the Tex family, because the competition was so extremely shoddy. Now it is a weakness; Word 2010 with Endnote is actually very nice here. It's a shame that relatively few Latex hackers appreciate how far behind Tex&co have fallen.
Makes me really appreciate Knuth/Lamport/Patashnik - Knuth is inspirational, his code keeps on rewarding those who read it. Patashnik doesn't get much love from me: he held so many wrong opinions vehemently.
Adding images to Latex documents is straightforward using the core libraries graphicx and putting \includegraphics{FILENAME} at the place you want the graphic. Adjusting placement to left, right, overhand, etc., is done using Tex primitives. It's true that using Tex , Latex and the main Latex packages correctly is not straightforward and that until you have mastered them, you can get into difficulties, but that is also true of Word.
The difference is that it takes longer learn how to produce any sort of ugly document in Latex than in Word, and longer to produce beautiful documents in Word than in Latex.
Sorry, but I'll stick to my point. We should stop making excuses for software that was great in its time but is simply not adequate anymore by today's standards.
Almost nothing is straightforward in LaTex, and images aren't either. Placing an image exactly where you want it can become a serious issue - even more so in documents that change and get reflowed all the time.
Yes, LaTex often makes good decisions that require little tweaking. But the moment you disagree with one of its decisions you find yourself in a world of pain.
Almost nothing is straightforward in Word, and images aren't either.
Word works very intuitively until you try to achieve fine control of layout. Then if you haven't done things the correct way, where Word's document model is not more intuitive than Latex's, getting the results you want will be painful.
It is true that the distance between Word and Latex in terms of suitability for producing high-quality output has narrowed drastically in the time from, say Word 6.0 to Word 2010. But the Tex family is not software that was great in its time. I use both Word and Tex-based technologies most working days, and I massively prefer to the Tex-based technologies in terms of quality output. It is still the case that for obtaining quality proofs from a .doc/.docx file, professionals use external software such as Adobe Indesign. Indeed, there are workflows that take Word documents and convert them to Tex-based representations for typesetting.
I don't know a piece of free software that directly competes with LaTeX, the latter has been the de-facto standard for university papers and a small group of book-writers/enthusiasts for about 20 years.
However, pitting LaTeX against Word is about as meaningful as pitting Linux against Windows. You wouldn't excuse the thorny Linux desktop experience with the security track record of windows either - it'd be an apples vs oranges comparison.
Open Office exists as part of a free Java-based ecosystem. I couldn't say it is used in any serious publication workflows, but the components are there. Context is aimed at serious publishers, and has strong roots in educational (i.e., not academic) publishing.
Apples vs. oranges: the point of this subthread has been that I thought your statement But the underlying toolchain and language are past their expiration date. By far. and backing this up by talking about how hard "easy" things can be that turn out to not to be trivialities anywhere. Latex is not for casual users, but it is very much not past its expiration date for authors who are serious about typesetting. I'm not making excuses for Latex, nor am I unfairly bashing the alternatives.
Of course, there are still some ugly corners, and the underlying code isn't always pretty. Things like Luatex sound quite promising in this regard.
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
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.
They asked me to send them a .doc Word version.
I changed the suffix on my file from .txt to .doc, sent them essentially the exact same file. It opened for them in Word because of the suffix, they were happy and I was then interviewed and hired.
That still makes me smile, these many years gone by.
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.
It doesn't look very nice when printed/PDFed by printing to PDF.
I've learned a great deal by reading Hacker News.
(Unlike, say, Firefox on Linux, it doesn't add header or footers, the text looks great, and in general doesn't look terrible at all.)
As far as links go, I already treat the resume like a print document; all the URLs are written out explicitly, have their own lines where appropriate. (I guess that's why I haven't run into the problem yet.)
<style type="text/css" media="print">
a:link, a:visited {
color: black;
text-decoration: none;
}
a:link:after, a:visited:after {
content: " (" attr(href) ") ";
}
</style>Details of this print dialog might, of course, depend on your GNOME version, your distribution, and the time of month, like everything on Linux.
Now the quality of the text is a separate issue; I haven't actually done any printing from a web browser on Linux in a few years, so I have no idea what that looks like nowadays.
Mine has been in HTML + CSS since about 1998 (over 12 years now, back then it was "XHTML") with CSS print styles. Everything inlined and very compact. Works great.
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.
I'd still use LaTeX, though. Media types are just a really cool trick...
- Guy who is interested in this issue as his resume is HTML but without drop shadows
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.
I would love to put my resume into LaTeX, if I had a simple way to do so. Unfortunately, it would be a pretty painful process, and not something for which I have currently budgeted the time. I will check out some of these templates and frameworks mentioned in the future. For now, though, since I haven't even started my new job yet, not an especially urgent project : )
While I'm on the topic: slides (presentation) done via LaTeX (and in PDF) look simply _amazing_. Powerpoint has _nothing_ on LaTeX + PDF.
Seriously, I have seen plenty of talks on plenty of conferences and events and the ones done with LaTeX always stood out as the most boring (-looking) ones.
Here's mine: http://sidneysm.com/resume/
The content of the résumé is JSON data (http://sidneysm.com/resume/resume.json) with some embedded Markdown, and it's transformed into an HTML document by a JavaScript tempting library I hacked up on top of jquery-haml.
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.
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.
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).
Not that recruiters are always the best way to get a job, but it would be silly to write them out of my searches
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... ....
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:
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)
"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.
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.
pretentious, adj. Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed
It's cynical and utterly baseless to deduce "pretentious" motives.
McGee explicitly mentions that the reason he does it in LaTeX is not to get the "+12 points bonus". I think you're being presumptuous in accusing others of being pretentious for using LaTeX.
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.
See sample resume's here: http://www.math.uic.edu/~hurder/math589/vita.html
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.
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/...
If you're comfortable with Vim or Emacs, both of them have good LaTeX support. The AucTeX package for Emacs is particularly excellent (it needs to be installed separately, but Debian packages it).
There are also editors best described as "LaTeX IDEs". They provide a syntax-highlighting editor and have particular support for running the LaTeX processing toolchain, parsing error messages and warnings (a nontrivial proposition), and sometimes provide support for generating LaTeX code snippets like table layouts. One such package is Texmaker, a Qt-based IDE with a look-and-feel somewhat like Qt Creator.
http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=gedit-latex-plugi...
I think linkedin has a resume upload and maybe branchout does as well if you are more of the social networking type.
You can get the template by git clone git://github.com/dscape/NunoJobResume.git
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.