[jd24]

Disagree with the latex point. If you are using latex just to put your resume together, you are wasting your time. Just do it in google docs or word. Anyone reviewing your resume won't even care unless you brought it up for some reason.

[neilv]

I used to have a resume in fine-crafted LaTeX, and it even once led to a discussion with a designer interviewer about typography.

But I noticed that applicant-tracking systems tended to not know what to do with the PDF, and I started to suspect that some companies weren't actually seeing my resume as a result. So I redid the resume in LibreOffice, and using a boring layout intended to be parsed easily by lousy ATSs.

[red-iron-pine]

This was my experience, too.

I had a sick 2, and for a second 3 column resume, and that always got mangled.

Even the single column LaTeX resume had challenges.

Never had an issue with MS Word. If I'm sending a resume to a person I know (e.g. met at a Linux User Group, etc.), I'll go with the LaTeX resumes, but otherwise you gotta get past ATS and that means MS Word.

[ornornor]

> I noticed that applicant-tracking systems tended to not know what to do with the PDF, and I started to suspect that some companies weren't actually seeing my resume as a result.

That’s a feature as far as I’m concerned. Companies that use these monstrosity ATSs that can’t be bothered to parse a valid PDF CV and that require hoops just to apply (create yet another account in their ATS, copy my cv into hundreds of text boxes, can’t proceed without a salary expectation or past salary history etc are places I want nothing to do with.

[pantalaimon]

How does it waste time? There are hundreds of templates you can use and they tend to look nice without much work.

I’ve once seen a résumé where someone meticulously crafted something out of multiple nested tables in Word - you could tell because the spacing was always a little different.

It really made me question their competency, not because proficiency in Word matters, but they obviously wasted so much time with something they had no idea how to do and could have just left out and the result would be better.

I don’t want to know what they’d do to the codebase.

[DontchaKnowit]

Naw fuck that. LaTeX is the shit for resumes. Doesnt take very long at all especially if you start from a template. Its actually easier then word because word is super unintuitive when it comes to formatting spacially.

[data-ottawa]

I used to have a flow where I wrote my experience in a master yaml file, then when I applied for a job I'd copy the yaml, delete everything non-relevant, and then feed it into pandoc. It worked great and I could just paste everything into those terrible "enter it twice" web forms. I even had a git repo with my job experience and I'd make a commit after major projects.

Last time I was job hunting it occurred to me I could just dump all that info into a Pages document and do the same process with instant WYSIWYG feedback, which I now do.

[jakey_bakey]

It's definitely a case of, me and probably 1% of hiring managers are super opinionated and will be massively biased towards it, and the other 99% who aren't nerds will just think I used a nice template

[DontchaKnowit]

agreed that I don't think it makes you stand out particularly just by virtue of using latex, but it does look nice, typically much nicer than most word templates. And it is also much easier to get looking consistent and well organized imo.

[scarface74]

And that’s the 1% I would avoid.

[snerbles]

While in undergrad I wrote a modular resume script that picked a set bullet points based on the tags I gave them, rendered those bullets into a LaTeX template, and then spat out the customized result with a PDF. With this I could quickly spin out slightly different resumes that showcase different tech stacks, emphasize/de-emphasize military service or defense contractor work, drop (or add) bullets that imply I was an older-than-usual grad, etc.

I still use the script out of habit, though I wouldn't write it now.

[siggen]

Speaking from experience, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) work only ideally with Word. Don’t use LaTeX unless you know for sure the individual receiving appreciates it.

[alkonaut]

But regardless of whether you wrote your resume in word or LaTeX, 99% of the time you'd send it as a PDF, correct? So are you saying LaTeX pdfs will parse worse than Word PDF's in automatic systems?

[siggen]

What I am saying is when I last ran this experiment a few years back word .doc formatted files (didn’t check .docx) returned the most calls from recruiters in comparison to .txt or .pdf or .html.

[red-iron-pine]

In my experience, yes.

[dunk010]

Came here to say this. It’s definitely a bad idea given that so much first stage screening is automated these days. If your CV parses badly you’re just as likely to be silently binned by an algorithm. I say this from personal experience, and now having begrudgingly rolled my CV back from LaTeX to Word.

[disgruntledphd2]

On my recent job search, I basically only got responses from smaller companies, and I'm now suspicious that this was the reason.

[psanford]

Latex is a shibboleth that will get you points in the minds of certain types of engineers looking at your resume. Its a bad signal to evaluate candidates on, but it probably does have some effect.

You don't need to use latex to benefit from this though. Just use computer modern.

[joezydeco]

Every resume I've ever touched that was set in Computer Modern was from an academic type that was headed back to school in a year or two. Didn't matter if they knew it or not, their head was still in that game. They always go back.

I bias against those resumes now.

[ornornor]

I make my CV with LaTeX (and compter modern) and a handmade template. I got an undergrad in business over a decade ago. I’m never going back to school.

[jacob_rezi]

We did build this resume software that is getting popular https://www.rezi.ai/

[seidoger]

I have my LaTeX resumé on GitHub, and I have a GitHub Action that rebuilds it on a PR, allowing me to see a "staging" version of it. Then it gets deployed to its final destination on merge.

Actually I've used my CV but also its deployment pipeline to sell myself!

[madduci]

Why is it a waste of time? With LyX it goes really fast.

I use personally Asciidoc and asciidoctor-pdf to generate my resume as PDF. It's easier and less prone to funny formatting shifts typical of Word documents.

[SnowHill9902]

People care. Hiring managers can be nerds too.

[jbverschoor]

What if your file won’t even get into the ATS?

Alles that you’re very technical, might even offer engineer any solution I want.

Hiring managers are usually not this kind of nerds.

[unmole]

> What if your file won’t even get into the ATS?

Why won't a PDF generated by LaTeX get into the ATS?

[ornornor]

I don’t know but I’ve noticed too. For me it’s a feature, I’m invisible to companies that use shitty ATS software where I likely would enjoy working anyway.

[blep_]

You render it to PDF and upload that. You don't just send people a latex source file.

[ornornor]

The generated pdf is what ats doesn’t like. Don’t know why but I’ve noticed too.

[blep_]

Which ATS do you use that doesn't accept PDFs?

[ornornor]

It accepts PDFs. It can't parse LaTeX-generated PDFs. No idea why. And that's not a specific one, it has been most ATSs in my experience.

[blibble]

having it in git is quite useful