LaTeX template for resume/curriculum vitae

Question

If you have a TeX'ed resume, did you use a template or make your own? Are there any useful packages? What looks the most professional? How about special considerations for different areas of work (e.g. in academia)?

Answer 1

For my current CV, I ended up using moderncv. It doesn’t have very many features but it’s very easy to use and yields a very elegant output.

However, I also want to mention its drawbacks: customizing it isn’t easy, especially since it doesn’t really use a clean, semantic markup. For example, to specify multi-column properties, you actually need to specify the items in an odd order (namely line by line instead of column wise).

Answer 2

I made my own. In the end, it was much easier that way; you get what you want. Especially if you have situations in which you need to quickly prepare e.g. a 4-page CV, you know how to tweak your own layout to meet the requirements.

Some key tools:

• article class

• geometry package for margins

• hyperref to have a nice PDF (e.g., DOI hyperlinks in the list of publications, proper PDF metadata)

• enumitem for tweaking list layout; titlesec for section headings

• cite, url, microtype, babel, ...

• Keep layout and content separated; easy to do something like \input{layout2}\input{content} to produce yet another version with a different layout.

• multibib to get multiple lists of references in the CV (one for journal papers, another for conference papers, etc.):

  \newcites{jrnl}{Journal Papers}
  \newcites{conf}{Conference Papers}
  ...
  \nocitejrnl{...}
  \nociteconf{...}
  ...
  \section{Scientific Publications}
  {
      \renewcommand{\section}[2]{\subsection{#2}}
      \setbiblabelwidth{99}
      \bibliographystylejrnl{yyy}
      \bibliographyjrnl{xxx}
      \setbiblabelwidth{99}
      \bibliographystyleconf{yyy}
      \bibliographyconf{xxx}
     ...
  }
  

  The "nocite" lists, etc., are automatically generated from a source file by using a Python script. The lists are actually in a separate file that I \input.

• A tweaked version of the unsrt Bibtex style: I added things like DOI links, etc., by using some ugly hacks.

• JabRef + some scripts to maintain the Bibtex database.

• Rubber (with % rubber: module pdftex) for compiling everything. It works OK with multibib.

Answer 3

There are lots of resume examples here with source: http://rpi.edu/dept/arc/training/latex/resumes/.

Google can show a thousand other examples, but that's a good place to start.

Answer 4

I like europass and everyone seems impressed when they see the results... specially for Europe applications!

Answer 5

I will second the Taraborelli CV templates at http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex. In the past I've used the curve and moderncv packages but, in the end, found the combination of his elegant templates + xelatex to be the simplest and most flexible solution. I wasn't constrained by particular sectioning, etc.

Personally, I use the Hoefler Text+Optima. I also like the Caslon.

Answer 6

The TeX Catalogue list CV packages in a category:

• Writing Applications for a Job / CV

By the way: I wasn't satisfied by the results of such packages. So, I used scrartcl and tabularx to typeset my CV. This way I could match it to the design of my application letter done with scrlttr2. I used tabularx in macros, allowing easy adjustments for all parts of the CV at once. Simple and elegant, no fancy colored lines and the like.

Copied from here to this topic following a request.

Answer 7

This strikes me as a particularly good example of a CV or vita. The latex code can be seen here. As an example, see the author's vita.

Answer 8

Minimalia has a nice LaTeX tutorial for CV, which gives a result like this (pdf). Minimalia also has a nice cover letter template.

Answer 9

I can offer you a video tutorial I made recently, which covers this topic using the article class. I just got hired for a lectureship position last week, so I think it is pretty good!

• TeX Tutorial 9: Formatting & CV Design Part 1
• TeX Tutorial 9: Formatting & CV Design Part 2

Answer 10

I've been using a lightly tweaked version of Michael DeCorte's res.cls. No idea if it is best of breed (nor why I chose it), but if it ain't broke. . . .

Answer 11

Ted Pavlic's CV templates are minimalistic, uses the hyperref package extensively and elegant!

http://www.tedpavlic.com/post_resume_cv_latex_example.php

Answer 12

I ended up making my own, but it took a while. Expect to have to fight LaTeX's defaults on a lot of things. That said, it's worth it. I learned a lot about LaTeX and have a good resume that I can say I wrote.

I wouldn't be surprised, but it seems like if you're going to use LaTeX for your resume, be prepared to answer truthfully whether you used a template or not, and be comfortable with the answer.

Answer 13

I found CurVe to be a nice package. Used it to get two student jobs and apparently, it worked :). The only drawback is that the default structure of the CV may need adjustments to your specific purposes.

Answer 14

For my current one I just rolled my own. I use fancyhdr for the header and footer, and lastpage so that I can display page x/y in the footer (so that the person reviewing it would know if they lost a page).

The entirety of the rest of the document is built from nested customized lists.

Answer 15

If you'd like to use LaTeX along with BibTeX, I have a template here:

http://pointsofsail.org/wikka.php?wakka=LatexCV

It is based on Dario Taraborelli's template (http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex) and uses bibtex and the bibentry package to make the publications section.

Answer 16

Here is a Hacker News thread with many examples of resumes and CVs in (La)TeX:

• http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3013654

Answer 17

I also ended up making my own style, however, I added one twist: I actually store my CV in XML format and then use an XSLT transform to convert it into a .tex file. While this required a lot more work upfront, the benefit is that I can use the same XML file to generate plain text, HTML, abridged, &c. versions without having to maintain n separate files. If you end up making your own LaTeX style for your CV, I would also suggest you seriously consider investing the time to use the XML/XSLT technique. You can see the results of this technique here (scroll to the bottom of the page to see the XML and HTML versions). It would take me a bit of time to clean them up, but I'd be happy to share my XSLTs with people if anyone is interested. This is an open source project that does something similar, however, it was started after I created my technique and I've never used it.

Answer 18

Here's an example of a nice-looking "home-made" CV: http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex

Answer 19

I used curve to create my CV:

http://www.mhelvens.net/cv

Quite customizable by itself. But I added several hacks and convenience macros of my own:

• nicer rubric-title underlining
• separate bullet-shapes for [ongoing], [notable] and [other]
• separate year-styles for [period] and [event]
• separate year-styles for [past], [ongoing, known end-year], [ongoing, open end]
• hyperlinked cross-references
• hyperlinked e-mail and url
• for specific projects and papers: hyperlinked www or doi
• when printing, cross-refs, urls and e-mail are black; www and doi links are invisible

Someday soon I should make the code public. But for now it's a bit too chaotic to release.

Answer 20

I adapted the resume class found in http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~csuros/latex.html.

Answer 21

I prepare 2 versions of my CV; a resume; lists of publications and references; statements of teaching philosophy and research interests all on the basis of currvita. Well, with a considerable amount of hand-hacking. For added geekiness, the list of publications is primarily a specialized bibtex output format (which works nicely with getting a bibtex formatted list of my publications from spires).

Answer 22

I use an earlier version of this: http://whiskypedia.valeriodistefano.com/Cygwin-Easy-2007.03.21/HTML/cygwin/usr/share/lyx/tex/cv.cls with certain modifications of my own, primarily to page geometry and fonts.