Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Correlation Between Taxes and Social/Economic Programs

I have always wondered if the taxes people pay correlate with the availability of social and economic programs and safety nets, not to mention the military programs that protect them. This idea comes in light of the notion that Europeans are highly taxed compared to their American counterparts, but they seem to have access to free (or almost free) education and health care while the US provides neither. The Europeans live and work at a more leisurely pace than Americans and they have the comfort of knowing that their government has put safety nets in case a disaster. The Europeans do a lot to ensure that all their citizens have comparable opportunities, and thus you are less likely to see a huge gap between the poor and the rich. Perhaps the lack of incentive to excel has stifled entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe to some extent. In fact, Europe has historically high unemployment rates than the US and the size of government there is significantly larger than that of the US....
Post a Comment
Read more

Microsoft Gone Wild

NBC and Microsoft have formed an intricate partnership in which Microsoft serves to expand and maintain NBC's presence in the online news and entertainment market while promoting its products. NBC online integrates many of Microsoft's products. MSNBC is co-owned by GE's NBC universal and Microsoft. I have no problem with the partnership, except for the way Microsoft pushes people to use Microsoft products while other alternatives do just as well or better. Let me provide some examples. You can't access NBC online videos unless you have a Windows media plugin. What about using Flash like everybody else. If you want to access Olympics games online at NBC Olympics, you better be using a Windows or a Mac because Microsoft does not have a Linux version of the Silverlight plugin that it is pushing hard in competition with Adobe Flash, the industry standard. Suppose you are using Windows, you pay a huge penalty for not using Internet Explorer!! Try watching videos with In...
Post a Comment
Read more

Victim of Asylum Roulette

Not too many stories resonate with me as much as the plight of legitimate asylum seekers whose desperate plea to find refuge in the US is ultimately decided by the questionable preference, judgment and mood of a single asylum officer (with some oversight from a regional asylum director) on one fateful day. That decision, according to numerous credible and through studies, depends largely on the location of the regional asylum center, the legal representation of the the applicant, the gender of the asylum officer just as much as the merit of the asylum case, while in fact the legitimacy of the asylum case should be the only relevant factor. This phenomenon has become so real that researchers at the Georgetown University law school have dubbed it the Refugee Roulette . Why am I so sensitive about this subject? My most devastating tragedy of late has been the denial of my legitimate and honest application for political asylum at the Chicago Asylum Office. When I applied believing the ...
2 comments
Read more