LaTeX might still be worth it for large documents (e.g. books) with lots of mathematical type-setting, but for small stuff Word is much easier.
Having written my thesis in it, I can say that it very much isn't. If you don't plan ahead and make sure you split chapters into individual files it takes actual minutes to compile and when it doesn't it's nigh impossible to figure out where the problem is because the error logs somehow manage to be less useful than if there weren't any logs at all.
It's a very nice idea in concept but the implementation is just arghhh. My current go-to for this sort of thing is Markdown instead. It may be far less powerful but it's also far more practical in almost all cases.
One major downside of LaTeX generated PDFs is HR's pdf parsers mangle them, and you'll spend hours manually keying elements into any application website you're unfortunate enough to encounter. It's probably a wash.
For a CV, LaTeX is way, way, way better for your personal bibliography. BibTex/BibLaTeX make it so nice to have a list of publications in your document.
\section{Publications}
\blfootnote{\adforn{63} indicates Editors' Suggestion}
\begin{enumerate}[align=right]
\item [\adforn{63}\,\stepcounter{enumi}\labelenumi] \fullcite{greatpaper}
\item \fullcite{prettygoodpaper}Can you expand on this? I would have thought that parsing a LaTeX PDF would be way, way easier than some random word processor's export-to-PDF.
There's also a chance that they mangle everybody's documents, and HR is just inflicting hours of toil on millions for no real reason at all.
Well structured Word files are based on forms and have well-labeled fields. That might help? I dunno. Maybe a Microsoft person or a Salesforce person can lift the curtain a smidge.
You’d think that the “semantic” nature of LaTeX makes it easy, but there’s an expansive set of macros between the source document and the PDF.
Just one example—LaTeX does things like replace “---” with “—” or replace “fi” with “fi”. How does LaTeX do it? At some point, somebody wrote some code which recognizes those patterns in the source file and emits the appropriate glyph. But these replacements are not equivalent—the “---” em dash needs to be a Unicode character with its own glyph, and “fi” needs to be two characters that share one glyph. Not important for DVI files, but important for PDF files where you want to copy the text out.
You can get this to work in LaTeX but it won’t work correctly by default, depending on how you are getting a PDF file. You end up with a preamble in all your LaTeX files to make them work nicely. You also probably want to use xelatex or lualatex instead of pdflatex (I don’t keep up with this stuff—get up to date recommendations elsewhere).
I figure that if that can extract the raw text correctly without mangling it, then it'll probably be okay for whatever applicant tracking system a company is using.
(My preference for my resumé these days is LuaLaTeX with nice OpenType fonts.)
Definitely more manageable, especially when it comes to alignment, multi-page tables and fonts.
Previous template: https://github.com/denysvitali/cv Rendered: https://github.com/denysvitali/cv/blob/master/main.pdf
Unless you are applying for TV/Movies/Modeling....
Hiring person might have a bias against people with blonde/brown/black hair. Oh! they look like they are cocky and difficult. This person reminds me of my ex, there is no way I could be in the same office.....
This list of biases are endless. Sexism/Racism/Ableism/Ageism/etc are all given a free pass if you include a picture, but become various shades of obscure without it.
jk, I do benefit from white privilege and with a name as common as John Smith I am sure I pass many other unseen/unknown-to-me hurdles.
I wasn't trying to argue/fight or even educate, simply carrying on the conversation as I thought it was occurring. Explain my thought process and reasoning for questioning the practice. If you feel confronted, I humbly apologize.I know that in some countries it is suggested to not put a picture on the CV because they want to be as unbiased as possible - but this is generally not an issue where I live.
In any case, as an Hiring Manager I do appreciate seeing the faces of the candidates on their CVs. It adds some personality to the CVs that are generally just black & white.
But again, this is very cultural and might be seen in the wrong way in, say, the US.
[1]: https://github.com/denysvitali/cv-2
[2]: https://cv.denv.it/