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Comment by SeoxyS | Hacker News Reader

What's the advantage of using something like LaTeX for a CV? The point of a a resumé is purely to make you look good, and as such you'd be much better off making a PDF using a real layout tool (like InDesign). You want your resumé to be friendly and attractive, you want to stand out from the pack, and to use typographical design principles to make any viewer like your CV more without even realizing why.

Btw, here's my resumé, for reference: http://kenneth.ballenegger.com/dl/resume2012.pdf

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The advantage of LaTeX is that is will yield CVs which look better than those from a word processor or HTML. The same is probably true of InDesign; both tools presumably focus on typographical principles (I've never used InDesign). The programming community generally likes LaTeX because of its technical workings, the fact that it's open source, and its associations with computer science (TeX was created by Donald Knuth).

For comparison, my résumé (made with LaTeX, content very out of date): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/712576/thomas_shaddox_resume_old.pdf

I think it really depends on a number of factors. Firstly, what job are you looking for? If it's design, then yes, maybe InDesign is a wise choice (I don't know, I'm not a designer and I'd never heard of InDesign before). If you are looking for a research position or more technical work, especially in sectors which value open source software experience, LaTeX might be a much better choice. Besides the fact that InDesign only runs on Windows and OSX (no FreeBSD or Linux), it's also not open source, and some places might prefer applicants that can get the job done with software that doesn't cost a bundle or come with onerous licenses.

I know that when I translated my resume from HTML to LaTeX, then posted it in PDF on my website, I started getting more requests for interviews (no, I'm not going to post a link; I'm not really looking for work and you probably wouldn't find it aesthetically pleasing anyway). I'm not sure whether it was the PDF or the LaTeX aspect (or something else) that made it more visible to recruiters, but LaTeX and/or a plain looking CV are obviously not interview killers. I wasn't even looking for interviews, didn't even post my resume to any job sites! I mostly try to keep my resume up to date for practice and keeping my options open.

To be blunt, I really find the layout of your CV distracting. The big headings and bolded text tell me to awkwardly start reading in the middle of the page, but as soon as I try to do that my brain wants to read the stuff on the left (since that where the most important stuff should be), but the stuff there is extremely small and uninviting to read compared to the prose in the middle so I leave knowing not much more than that you're some kind of Engineer. Don't take this the wrong way, I think it's good you're putting this much thought and effort into your CV but your phone number is hardly the most important thing on that page and certainly not the first thing you'd want a potential employer to see.

A CV in LaTeX does not have to be typesetted in Computer Modern nor have a dry "LaTeX feel". Using XeTeX, TikZ, fontspec and Open Type fonts you can do fun stuff that look gorgeous.

The great thing for me is that I can directly import my .bib and all my publications are automagically included in my CV. My attempt: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3809633/cv_adrien_friggeri.pdf (slightly out of date, should recompile and update)

It's a bit too 'colory' for my taste but I like the design. Is it open source?

I'll have to clean it up but I'll definitely open source it.

Just fyi, I too would also be very interested in the source for this. It really looks nice!

I'd be interested in this too!

Good suggestion.

I don't know what it is about Computer Modern but when I see a document formatted in that font, my subconscious automatically says "still in academia".

I think that's because it's hideous, so you can only get away with hideous in academia.

I am in academia but under no circumstances do I use CM.

Modded up for the courage of posting your own resume.

Off top of my head - look at the right edge of your text. It doesn't look good. They have some work to do on their line break algorithm. TeX, and LaTeX, take care of it so automatically and so well that you could put a ruler to it. It can even divide words into syllabes. Example here:

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/pp.pdf

And it's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of typographic conventions developed by trial and error over centuries. They just look good or easier to read.

More examples here, TeX Showcase: http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/

With InDesign though he can easily fix that with manual line-breaking. I think that if you understand the typographical principles you're trying to deploy, you'll end up making it work, and if you don't you're likely to end up with glaring errors no matter what setup you use.

(My resume is in latex, I'm just saying I think there's more than one way to skin the cat)

(weasel word) people think manual line-breaking is the thing that needs fixing :-).

Off top of my head - look at the right edge of your text. It doesn't look good. They have some work to do on their line break algorithm.

InDesign can use the Knuth-Plass line-breaking algorithm for its H&J. In this case, it looks like hyphenation has been disabled, so obviously that doesn't apply, though.

TeX, and LaTeX, take care of it so automatically and so well that you could put a ruler to it.

Until you get an overfull box that just ignores the right margin, anyway. :-)

There's a lot of typographic conventions developed by trial and error over centuries. They just look good or easier to read.

Or, in many cases, they are just folklore with no substantial evidence whatsoever to support them, propagated within a discipline notorious for confusing subjective/aesthetic preferences with facts, and placing undue weight on doing things the "correct" way without being able to demonstrate that any particular advantage results.

A CV written in LaTeX has an advantage : it has a nice geeky touch, and to people like me immediately makes a good first impression -- as opposed to a CV sent in docx that I will immediately throw away -- because generally Real Hackers (or aspiring Hackers) use LaTeX for their CVs, while quiche eaters definitely use MS Word.

Note: I receive and dig through many CVs, while I didn't send mine to anyone for more than 12 years. My view of LaTeX maybe slightly skewed by my old age, but I'm probably quite representative of the sort of people developers would want their resumes to be read by, rather than some HR drone.

There is no advantage. If you are a LaTeX-Guru use LaTex, in other cases use a tool you allready know. And concentrate on the content of the CV.

If you would allow me to give you advise on your CV, I would change the 'wall of text' you have as a description of your past experience and replace it with concrete bullet points.

For example:

"Working at The Walt Disney Company’s Tapulous subsidiary provided me with experience in working in both small and big teams. I worked mostly on the backend side of our Tap Tap Revenge 4 release."

In this paragraph you have the word "work" 3 times, and is very vague. I would replaced with something like * Day to day interaction in small and big sized teams. * Implemented XYZ engine as part of the backend of the Tap Tap Revenge 4 release. * Performed code development using version control (SVN), unit testing (CppUnit)

While we're giving CV advice: "worked on X" is weak. Implemented feature X, is better. Implemented feature X, resulting in positive outcome Y, is best of all.

Actually, the design of your CV is somewhat irrelevant. Unless you're actually a designer ;)

It seems that everyone in my office used a pretty plain CV typeset with moderncv LaTeX class.

Not really, design is an important factor, someone reviewing your cv isn't going to be looking at it very long so it's important that they be able to extract the information they need from it very rapidly.

The design of a cv is as important as the design of a sales page on a website.

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