[Freak_NL]

> MS Word is the only game in town, like it or not.

That's stretching it. Most companies are totally fine with PDF these days, not in the least because it is WYSIWYG for screen and print and just works. Looks a lot more professional too; especially if you are looking for a job in IT.

When recruiters or temp agencies ask for Word documents, they want this because then they can strip out all your personal data and pass the documents on to the companies (their customers) looking for employees. With PDF they need to do more work.

[WGT]

> they want this because then they can strip out all your personal data

This is correct. Agency employees are taught to remove contact info, apply their own header, and trim the length (5 page maximum) before sending to clients.

[Tempest1981]

I've seen recruiters pass along résumés in plain text format. Now it makes sense -- copy/paste from PDF.

[vijayr]

Not just personal data, some recruiters even add skill sets to the resume without checking with the candidate

[arethuza]

Well that problem might go away as the latest versions of Word open PDF files for editing by converting them to an editable World file, works pretty well the few times I have used it.

[MyNameIsFred]

Sometimes PDFs store actual character data (like vector graphics), and sometimes they store static images. Last I checked (admittedly a few years ago), Word conversion only works on the former. It didn't do OCR or anything so dramatic.

If only some PDFs will work for them, they wouldn't accept them at all.

[dschep]

Can it handle the fancy ligatures[0] that LaTeX creates?

[0] http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/297426/spacing-betwee...

[coherentpony]

Yeah, I tend to agree. I write my CV in LaTeX. This way I can easily add or remove things, I can source control the .tex files, and I can also produce a PDF file.

[Bombthecat]

Also pdf can contain clear text. No need for ocr...