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Résumé Template Options for LaTeX and XML

Finding the right résumé template is quite painful for those of us who prefer to do things the more difficult yet elegant way. The alternative is to use LaTeX or XML. Preparing a LaTeX résumé style sheet (HowTos here) from scratch requires more savvy that I have, not to mention the time and effort. So, I prefer to adopt some templates from the web and modify the pieces for my taste. Unfortunately, many issues arise when one considers the many templates out there.
  1. The PDFs generated using these templates do not get properly scanned by software used by hiring companies. That could very well mean the difference between getting hired or being rejected. I noticed this issue during the many times I submitted PDFs generated by 'pdflatex'.
  2. In a related issue, converting PDFs to text using 'pdftotext -layout file.pdf' does not produce a desirable text file. For one, the text wrapping is messy, so the text might have to be terminated at about 80 characters by adjusting the LaTeX margins and/or font sizes. Vertically, the text should appear in the order that is appears in the PDF file.
  3. Considering résumés are almost universally limited to a page, none of these templates utilize the space well to provide enough room to input necessary information.
  4. If one were to generate an HTML version of the résumé using 'latex2html', it would be nice if the generated HTML page preserved the desired look so that further tinkering would not be necessary.
All these frustrations led me to explore as many of the LaTeX templates out there, compile a list of templates and suggest the best one. While doing my search, I did come across the possibility of using XML and that will be discussed as well.

LaTeX

David Grant: TEX: resume.tex PDF: resume.pdf TXT: resume.txt
Daniel Burrows: TEX: resume.tex PDF: resume.pdf TXT: resume.txt
Matthew M. Boedicker: TEX: resume.tex PDF: resume.pdf TXT: resume.txt
Andrew McNabb: TEX: resume.tex PDF: resume.pdf TXT: resume.txt
Yisong Yue: TEX: resume.tex PDF: resume.pdf TXT: resume.txt
Constantinos Michael: TEX: resume.tex PDF: resume.pdf TXT: resume.txt
ZS Freebees: TEX: resume.tex PDF: resume.pdf TXT: resume.txt

Here is a summary from Renssaeler Polytechnic Institute on LaTeX résumés.

res1.pdf res1.tex
res2.pdf res2.tex
res3.pdf res3.tex
res4.pdf res4.tex
res5.pdf res5.tex
res6.pdf res6.tex
res7.pdf res7.tex
res8.pdf res8.tex
res9a.pdf res9a.tex
res9b.pdf res9b.tex
res10.pdf res10.tex
helvetica.sty

res.cls


There are many other templates but they are not all that different from the ones listed here.



XML

Apparently, one could generate a nice looking résumé using special XML résumé library(XMLRésuméLibrary).
Two examples demonstrating this capabilities are shown here.

Here is another example of an resume generated using XML and the PDF output.

My Final Decision

After much deliberation, I decided to go with a slightly morphed version of my previous résumé.

Here is the modified style sheet, the TEX source, the generated PDF and TEXT outputs. The HTML version generated using latex2html looks like this.

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