Ask HN: Crafting a CV/resume for an internship: LaTex, HTML, or something else?

12 points by slyv 13 years ago | 17 comments

Hey all.

I am currently enrolled as a student and am looking for an internship this summer (hopefully in the political arena). I have been working on my limited CV/resume, and am really curious as to what is the best to design it in? I have been researching the past few hours for examples on the design of CVs/resumes, on HN and elsewhere. Now, I've finally decided to sit down and write it out, but curious as to what is the favorite way to do it in. Word is not even an option :P But, I have been debating between LaTeX and just rolling it in HTML/CSS. Which do you prefer? Do you have any examples I could browse?

Thanks!

(shameless plug: Anyone looking for an intern this summer? :P)

bnjd 13 years ago |

Whatever you spend the least time on and makes it the easiest to tailor to other positions. People hiring want the information and as long as your don't write it in crayon there won't be any issues with a simple google docs or word document.

malloc47 13 years ago |

I'm going to plug LaTeX. LaTeX macros are ugly to use, but they're suitably powerful, and since it's compiled, you don't have to worry about cross-browser issues once you have it generated. I prefer to point to LinkedIn instead of producing a separate webpage since I'm less of a frontend dev, so YMMV.

My resume [1] and source [2] for reference:

[1]: http://resume.malloc47.com

[2]: https://github.com/malloc47/cv/

slyv 13 years ago | |

Thanks for including the source. Really nice resume at first glance, looking over the source right now.

malloc47 13 years ago | | |

Hope it helps (even if that means ruling out LaTeX!). I'm going to be on the job market in the near future too, so I spent some time evaluating the LaTeX vs. HTML options not too long ago.

If you do end up going with LaTeX, I would highly recommend XeTeX/XeLaTeX so you have a larger font selection.

bjeanes 13 years ago | |

I really love the way you show skill proficiencies. Mind if I use the idea?

malloc47 13 years ago | | |

Absolutely. I'm sure I pilfered the idea from somewhere else and tweaked it a bit. Glad it may be of use to you.

I was trying to stay away from the typical "Some Experience" to "Expert" scale typically used for skill proficiencies, and instead provide a sense of the scale at which I had used each skill directly.

idoh 13 years ago |

Funny, I'm on the other side of this (trying to hire a product manager). I prefer PDF, but read the job description, they might like word instead.

The majority of resumes I get are pretty boring word docs derived from the standard templates - it gets boring after a while and the candidates blend together. Just a touch of design is all it takes to stand out.

splatcollision 13 years ago |

I'd love to see wider use of HTML / URLs as a standard format for resumes. So much easier to share and include analytics so you can see who's checking your resume out.

Here's an example of mine that I built with my own product, Edit Room: http://splatcollision.com/resume/

Edit Room is a web design prototyping app that builds HTML and CSS. Supports using Markdown as a content source. Easy to do responsive designs. Link: http://www.edit-room.com/

Another, cleaner design that I just put together: http://www.edit-room.com/review/yunWYrWs

Donito 13 years ago |

Use PDF, it's a format that will work for anyone, or any device and is printer friendly. Now whether you want to use LaTex, html, or word to design your resume is up to you.

Baliw 13 years ago |

I did mine in html/css. I just finished updating it a couple days ago. If you're handy with html/css then it's a snap. Once it's done it's easily accessible online and I can use a browser to print-to-pdf and get a pdf version to use in attachments. I used a print style sheet to clean it up in the transition to pdf.

http://resume.dan.me/

kkoppenhaver 13 years ago |

I agree with Baliw. Mine wasn't too difficult to set up, basically ported it from my previous Word version. Put it on my Wordpress site and it's easy to print off if I actually need a printed version. Good luck with the internship!

http://www.keanankoppenhaver.com/resume/

andymoe 13 years ago |

What I do is keep an up to date generic one in google docs and then duplicate it and tweak for each company I send it out to. I usually send it as a PDF or a word doc if they ask for that specifically. Either way It's pretty easy to just export from google docs in whatever format you want.

chucklarge 13 years ago |

Shameless plug for my html resume template, https://github.com/chucklarge/html-resume-template

I used to use LaTeX but couldn't figure out how to style it exactly as i needed.

If you do use LaTeX, use the \LaTeX function.

eduardordm 13 years ago |

There should be a service that could read your linkedin account and generate a decent resume automatically.

I wouldn't pay for it, but it would be nice.

kkoppenhaver 13 years ago | |

http://resume.linkedinlabs.com/

bharani_m 13 years ago | |

Resumonk - http://www.resumonk.com

cwarrior 13 years ago |

PDF, always PDF or Word, unless this is for some type of design job.