Today, I've written my resume in LaTeX and it looks great and all
It took me about 2 hours to get everything right
But I've been thinking, what benefits do I get from writing it in LaTeX rather than in a word processor like MS Word or OOo Writer?
I'm not comparing TeX/LaTeX to those programs, but I just want to know if TeX is the right choice for resumes.
I think a resume is more typesetting than word processing, so I would not use MS Word or OOo Writer. One could use Indesign or a free layout program.
Often resumes contain text in columns. Text in narrow columns is hard to wrap--TeX does a good job here. For even better justification use microtype with pdfLaTeX. I think with microtype the chance to avoid big gaps or lots of hyphenation is better than with word processors.
It's good if the resume matches the covering letter. Since LaTeX is great for letters, for example with the scrlttr2 class, it would naturally be a good choice for the resume.
There are specialized LaTeX classes. Though I prefer a class matching the class for the covering letter, such as scrartcl together with scrlttr2. tabularx does already good work then.
A resume can be used for many years in your working life, it will grow with the time. LaTeX is stable and remains mostly compatible, so you can reuse your resume when you apply for the next job in 10 years. Imagine, you would have used Works or Starwriter many years ago... you would require old software and an old operating system to reuse an old word processing document. With LaTeX it would be much easier.
ConTeXt, which is based on TeX, gives you even more control over typesetting.
On TeX tips, written by John D. Cook, I found a link where Dan McGee shares his experiences:
LaTeX résumé Follow-up including a template and an example pdf
While looking what others say to this question, I found Matthew M. Boedicker's Tips together with links to resume templates and examples on
If you are a scientist, you will probably need to add a list of publications, conference talks, and similar things to your cv. This is very nicely, and easily handled in LaTeX. With MSWord or OOWriter it gets really messy, expecilay if you have to keep updated your cv in different languages.
LaTeX is also a nice format to store in a revision control system to track different revision of the cv you hand out to different people in different contexts, and its evolution in time.
Have a look at this nice article http://robjhyndman.com/researchtips/cv/.
Besides all the answers here, I have recently modularized my resume with TeX. With this I can quickly build my resume for a variety of different jobs. The basic idea is:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\input{qualifications-Software-QA-Manager}
%\input{qualifications-Tech-Writer}
\end{document}
So I can just uncomment the appropriate sections, and build a completely different resume. My sections are more defined than this, but I've found it to be a major plus when applying for many jobs.
\startbuffer...\stopbuffer) into separate master documents. I generally want to handle formatting and job-specific information together.
Commented
Feb 28, 2011 at 14:37
One intangible benefit: you are signalling to an employer that you have taste, a certain degree of intellect, and a bit of non-crowd-following behavior. When resumes come across my desk, I give a mental +1 to TeX-formatted resumes. The only resumes that get a higher bump are plain ascii ones.
It also draws attention from potential employers who appreciate TeX.
Everyone seems to be focused on looks and I see many multipage layouts for CVs in the links, but the content is often the most important, and unless you do think in pink and black with a comics font, the look is quite secondary. The content and conciseness are the things that will make a difference.
Here is what a friend from Microsoft says:
No one commented about the people who are actually going to read the resume. :) When I go through resumes for phone screening or interviews. I don't care how nice or well presented a resume is. As long as it's short and well summarized. In addition, having a solid resume with recommendations on LinkedIn seems to be getting more important efficient these days...
It seems to me that serious candidates will do nice resume, wether it is with LaTex or something else, thus the focus should really be on the content. In that, the fact that latex will allow you to focus on that might be good, but if you spend more time hacking a style for your resume, you are not augmenting your skills on the content ;)
You get more proficient with LaTeX. :)
Seriously: the code is plain text, so you will be able to re open the document in 10, 20 years and extract at least some information from it. And for my documents I don't know if this is necessary or not, but I like it when I know that this is possible.
I believe it is independent of the actual type of the document you are writing. For many years I had been using MS Word, later OO Writer, but when I saw the quality LaTeX could provide I didn't hesitate for a second to throw out everything and start all over with LaTeX.
You write your resumé in LaTeX because it gives you fine control and superior quality, both of which are of utmost importance with this type of document. The very purpose of the resumé is to impress the reader with both looks and content. You have to provide the content, and LaTeX, with your help, can provide the looks.
And more generally, almost anything you typeset in LaTeX even with no or very limited customization will look much better than anything you write using Word or Writer.
You use the tool you are more accustomed too e.g. if I'm to write a resume then ConTeXt is my natural choice unless it need to supplied in some weird format (.doc or something). Fighting an office suit to just write a few pages document would be a crazy choice of me.
I like moderncv LaTeX class, it just fit my needs, and the output is really clean.
Mostly, the benefits you get are the same ones you would get from doing any document in LaTeX instead of a word processor.
Basically with LaTeX you can focus on the content rather than the formatting. The document is plain text and therefore shareable, compressible, source-controllable, and future-proof but easily compileable to PDF at any time.
In the particular case of a resumé, you'll find that converting from one style to another is often a question of modifying a command in the header. Also most resumé packages deal gracefully with multi-language needs.
A few points, I hope that they illustrate what you're getting. LaTeX is simply the best format for writing documents.
(as an aside, LaTeX can not only replace Writer et al, but also Impress quite easily - see the beamer package)
I write my CVs in MS-word and used to send employment agencies a PDF copy. On several occasions, I have been requested the original MS-Word version. On one occasion, I got to see just what the agency had sent the prospective employer - they had edited my resume, added their own banner and removed direct contact information.
You may find using anything other than MS-Word may cause problems if your employment agency wishes to apply edits before passing it on.
Well I did my resume in Latex and switched back to OpenOffice. I'm not a LaTeX/TeX junkie though I use it a lot.
LaTeX is nice for long pieces of text, like thesis, article, presentation, when you either are eager to spend much time making it look great (I find customizing looks of papers cumbersome in TeX) or don't care about looks (then stick to defaults --- and then it will look ok). You cant stick to defaults in your CV, and I was never willing to spend couple of hours on just formatting my CV.
Also LaTeX is most effective when writing long pieces of text --- you format it once and it will look great (formatting long piecies of text --- like thesis --- in OO or MSOffice is a pain). CVs are short, so there is little benefit.
It's much easier to do layout of graphical elements in WYSWIG editor. Write -> Compile -> see .pdf cycle is cumbersome.
It's easier to give your CV for review to someone who does not use TeX (well most people who'd I give my resume for review are).
Having said all this: it's possible that I will in future switch back to writing CV in LaTeX (or most probably LyX with custom TeX code).
I have a beautiful cv written with XeTeX using the suggestions/template I found at http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex
##Moderncv with banking style worked for me
I started with a word resume, found it too challenging to bring uniformity in it and switched to latex. However, it is difficult for some time to get used to the template. Eventually, when I compare the resume I prepared in Word and LaTeX, LaTex wins. I think LaTex is specifically helpful when you want to make changes affecting the whole file rapidly.
