11 ms·

Show HN: Simple and elegant Markdown-based resumes

255 points by awalGarg 11y ago

mbrutsch 11y ago
Please excuse my questions, I'm old and slow... I see where I can try it myself, can I see one already done (before investing the time to download and try it myself)? As an hourly contractor, everything is a tradeoff w/billable hours.
- bsaul 11y ago
  Spent some time trying to look for an already filled example as well, so you're not the only one.
- awalGarg 11y ago
  Apologies but I didn't understand that very well. If you mean where you can see an example CV made from the app, you can checkout mine at https://gist.github.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e https://gist.github.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e I will add a url in the readme as well, thanks!
  - mbrutsch 11y ago
    Interesting, thank you.
- sveme 11y ago
  I'd like to see a sample too - right now, the website looks like it is basically taking the input from the forms and outputs it to markdown? Or is it applying the styling used in the mentioned stackoverflow resume generator? The key to a great markdown-based resume is the subsequent styling, writing lists and headings in markdown isn't a big issue. That's where the other markdown-resume generators break down, I simply did not like the styling and did not want to change all the CSS myself, at the time, needing something decent quickly.
jcadam 11y ago
The site is broken for me in Chrome. Though in any case, I prefer to use LaTeX for my resume -- can't imagine markdown beating that.
- awalGarg 11y ago
  Hey! It seems like rawgit was having some issues serving the files randomly. I have switched it to use the CDN url instead. Hopefully that shall fix the issue :)
- muzani 11y ago
  I like LaTeX but it was very tedious for resumes. With resumes, you sometimes want to change the format entirely. LaTeX is great for a consistent format, not so much when experimenting. Markdown also has the benefit of giving you an up to date plaintext resume. I like that a lot, considering a lot of job sites like to automatically (and poorly) convert PDF into plaintext.
  - mnw21cam 11y ago
    So LaTeX is perfect for that, since you can change the entire format by changing the content of a function. You did mark up all your entries as function calls, didn't you?
rndstr 11y ago
503 https://rawgit.com/gwendall/way.js/master/way.min.js https://rawgit.com/gwendall/way.js/master/way.min.js
- awalGarg 11y ago
  I have switched to the cdn url (https://cdn.rawgit.com/gwendall/way.js/master/way.min.js https://cdn.rawgit.com/gwendall/way.js/master/way.min.js). Please let me know if the issue persists, thanks!
seivan 11y ago
Not an expert, correct me if I am wrong here. But I've wrestled with something similar. Be careful not to use REM for font-sizes as @Print ignores them, if you must (and obviously I/Brain must) you could get around by using % (so 1.5 REM -> 150%). Make sure to set font-size on both body and html. Also, not sure how to explain it, but if you open up a PDF in Preview, and select print. You might get a different size/layout and some design issues there. So always double check, but be careful not to use the Printed (Saved from Preview.app) as it disables links. Don't spend any time on CSS transitions, as a PDF won't show them(?) (yep, sigh) Also watch out for printers adding margins both top/bottom and sides.
awjr 11y ago
I have to say that although interesting, you're still in a situation where potential employers will print off copies of your CV and hand them around for people to comment on. The golden rule I stick to is your CV (excluding detailed work history) should fit on one page. I'm not sure this supports this.
- ricksplat 11y ago
  I go for two pages (two sides of a single page) myself. But I think US resumes are a slightly different concept that goes into exhaustive detail about work history. As somebody that has acted as hiring manager in the past, I definitely preferred the shorter curriculum vitae format - it shows attention to detail and an understanding of what is relevant to the job at hand. I have had feedback on my own CV from time to time that it didn't go into enough detail, so it's horses for courses I suppose ...
  - lfowles 11y ago
    In the US, resumes are the short summary and CVs are exhaustive.
  - Jemmeh 11y ago
    You've got it backwards. Resumes are typically one page. CVs are detailed. In the USA most places will ask for a one page resume. I've noticed some tech companies want a longer resume or a CV though. http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/cv-vs-resume-difference-and-when-use-which/ http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/cv-vs-resume-difference-an...
  - awjr 11y ago
    Oh my CV is 3 pages in length, but you know what I can do and most of where I have worked on the first page. The last 2 pages are detailed breakdowns of where and what I have done.
- xeromal 11y ago
  Piggy backing on your post. From my experience in the US, most two page resumes can be consolidated down to 1 page. Remove the soft skills like good listener and quick learner, and other extra cruft most soft skill resumes have. A good rule of thumb is 1 page for every 10 years of experience.
mrweasel 11y ago
Apparently we have very different opinions as to what constitutes elegant. I would call the example messy and confusing.
- laurent123456 11y ago
  Yeah I think it's due to the (mis)use of quoted text to indent some paragraphs, which means there are vertical bars all over the place. The additional horizontal lines don't help much either. I think if he removes that it would look relatively clean, like a README.md on GitHub. Here's the source of the example by the way: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e/raw/09e63fd69f2288cd631a492d392e8d114af7a432/res.md https://gist.githubusercontent.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c9...
- awalGarg 11y ago
  Hmm, well, noted :) If you could point out some specific elements in the rendered version though, like "not enough spacing" or "that h3 should be an h2", that'd be extremely helpful!
  - mrweasel 11y ago
    It's not really that simple. I'm not trying to be dick about, because I do think that resumes from markdown is a good idea. The grey borders/lines, they need to go. They serve no purpose. Contact information goes on top, not buried under the profile. Technologies, can go after the "job description". It makes sense to list them in relation to the jobs though. Know one cares how many time your project was stars or forks your project has. If that was relevant they would have contacted you :) Just link to your GitHub/Bitbucket/whatever- page. Writing and favourites can go, unless you a famous blogger, but then I would just list it as a job. The entire resume takes up to much space. It's country specific, I know, but I think it needs to fit on one A4 page. Personally, I just don't like the layout, sorry.
    - awalGarg 11y ago
      > The grey borders/lines, they need to go. They serve no purpose. Completely agree. While I think it is fair to put a bit of blame of Github's bad rendering (the same markdown looks much better in stackedit's rendering, for instance [1]), but I'd still see how can I preserve the grouping without blockquoting things. I can see the reasoning for rest of the points as well, but to each his own :) [1]: https://stackedit.io/viewer#!url=https://gist.githubusercontent.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e/raw/09e63fd69f2288cd631a492d392e8d114af7a432/res.md https://stackedit.io/viewer#!url=https://gist.githubusercont...
dkhenry 11y ago
Looks good, I wonder how it compares to https://jsonresume.org/ https://jsonresume.org/ One of the things I liked about jsonresume is I could separate the data from the layout.
- ytjohn 11y ago
  I've had my resume in markdown for a long time, but I have plans to convert it to json resume format as I feel that is the better approach long term.
brianzelip 11y ago
tl;dr - It is a web app that turns form input into a downloadable markdown file. There is a demo w/ live preview that displays the markdown with Bootstrap css. Here's a screenshot, http://imgur.com/qCM0yo2 http://imgur.com/qCM0yo2 The author provides a gist that shows the markdown displayed in GitHub's css, https://gist.github.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e https://gist.github.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e
SixSigma 11y ago
Resume tip : don't say "I was responsible for ...." use the STAR system : Situation, Task, Action, Results While I was part of the Transport Team I reviewed the delivery schedules by analysing historic data in Excel. I was able to reduce transport costs by 10% per year and increase utilisation by 3%. Don't be afraid of : we found that there were no improvements possible which resulted in no extra spending for the coming year.
- braythwayt 11y ago
  Another way to frame things is: - Where We Were - Where We Needed To Go - How We Got There A variation on this: Visualize being on one side of a chasm. Describe this side of the chasm, emphasizing the bad stuff. Describe why we want to go to the other side, emphasizing the good stuff. Describe the chasm, emphasizing how deep, wide, and impassible it is. Now describe the bridge you built, your role in building it, challenges you faced, &c. But always start with describing both sides and the chasm. You can use any format you like for describing the bridge and your role in building it, the important thing is that the reader has the chasm firmly fixed in their midn while reading about your accomplishment.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  So what if you were part of a failed startup? You did your job, and did your job pretty well, but the actual products failed to find its audience due to factors (mostly) outside of your control, since you weren't making the decisions on what to make or how to market it? How do you use STAR to not make that sound bad? I think I currently say I delivered the projects on time and on budget and talk about what I was responsible for, and I know I personally gained a lot of experience from the projects, but every time I see STAR suggested, I'm like "Well, if I did that, I'd basically have to say that my work resulted in the company losing money and ultimately folding." I get plenty of attention for my resume as it is, it just always bugged me when people suggest STAR as if it's the only way to write a job description on a resume.
  - braythwayt 11y ago
    Situation: When I replaced the VP of Engineering at BloatCo, it had 4,000 engineers, producing a mediocre social media product that was roundly criticized for such failures as being unable to edit posts and having no control over online harassment. Task: Cut costs and get the product and feature pipeline flowing. Action: Implemented a thorough review of functional teams, engaging both front-line management and customer representatives to distinguish the individual and practices that were delivering value from those who weren’t. Established a customer council, including social activist and freedom of speech advocates, to advise on anti-harassment policies. Result: After a painful transition lasting two quarters, we are reviving public kudos on new features and our reputation as a tool for scumbags has been turned around. Our burn rate is down by 40% in engineering, proving that sometimes, you can cut costs and increase production. post scriptum: Alas, this did not increase any advertising revenue, so the company was sold to Yahoo, who fired me and are rewriting everything in Perl 6. But fixing those problems were outside of the scope of my authority.
ryan42 11y ago
I've used Markdown Resume Builder before (http://there4development.com/markdown-resume/ http://there4development.com/markdown-resume/) and aside from sometimes fighting with a few layout issues it is great. From a markdown source file it produces a pretty clean PDF/html version of my resume and can choose from multiple preset styles.
cjauvin 11y ago
The markdown-to-pdf resume toolchain I'm currently using is: (1) Render with https://github.com/joeyespo/grip https://github.com/joeyespo/grip (with a few minor CSS tweaks) (2) "Print" to PDF with Chrome The documents it produces are quite sober, but I find it works very well.
EGreg 11y ago
What would you guys want to see in a blogging platform? Markdown or WYSIWYG? Or both somehow? Git for source control? Or versioning and diffs like wordpress? Themes? Purely css or something more, less secure? How would you want to host it and customize it? Would you want any social features besides roles and permissions? Such as quoting content from others, or pingbacks or something? Finally, generate static files or just cache heavily? I think the latter is better but a script can exist to generate the former on environments where caching infrastructure isn't very robust. Comments - here I would just say use third party javascript based stuff and plop it on the page. It's kind of related to this post but I have built a framework where I could probably make a blogging app like Wordpress in a week.
- defiblep 11y ago
  Please God, no more blogging platforms....
hellofunk 11y ago
A markdown resume certainly could look simple and elegant, but this tool is nowhere near it.
cies 11y ago
When I think "elegant text", I think Tex. My resume is in Tex (fork it and your may be too). And do not forget to use Sharelatex and you are not installing any software to get a nicely typeset PDF resume. https://github.com/cies/resume https://github.com/cies/resume
- joshkpeterson 11y ago
  What do you do when someone asks for a Word version of your resume?
- mnw21cam 11y ago
  Yeah, another comment (now dead) asks what you do when someone asks for a Word format version. My CV (I think that's what you're all talking about - took a little while to work out you weren't actually resuming anything) is in LaTeX format. Places regularly got confused with being sent a PDF, and demanded Word instead, so I would just convert each page to a bitmap and load into a Word document as an image. Inelegant, but functional. Back in the days when I was applying via job agencies, I even had one complain that there was something "wrong" with my Word document, as they couldn't work out how to edit any of it. I told them I thought that was a feature, not a bug.
  - jrowley 11y ago
    I don't think I've ever had a place ask me for my resume in word format. The closest is a Microsoft interview where they sent me some forms in docx format that I had to send back filled in. Also you can do some basic conversion from Tex to word using pandoc http://pandoc.org/ http://pandoc.org/
    - RussianCow 11y ago
      I've had a recruiter ask for a Word version of my CV so that he could make minor edits to it for each relevant position, which makes sense. Otherwise, I don't think there's an excuse for not accepting a PDF.
darkhorn 11y ago
https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home you can export it as xml and you can upload it later to update. It sends you a pdf or word file to your email if you want.
luso_brazilian 11y ago
For those in Europe this is already a solved problem: Europass [1] A service kindly provided by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training [2] a European Union's agency. It has a CV builder and outputs an standardized PDF that can even be fed back into the builder for further updates. It is a joy when going through a pile of CVs to read the ones built by that tool, makes the job a lot easier because it allows the applicant to focus on the relevant data instead of on the layout. Better for the RH, better for the applicant, win win all around. [1] https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home [2] http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/ http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/
- gervase 11y ago
  Is there any reason why this tool can/should only be used by European citizens? Presumably an easy-to-read and nicely formatted resume is something that would be helpful internationally.
  - ma2rten 11y ago
    I don't know how big of an issue that is, but in the US there are some different conventions with respect to resumes than in the EU.
- Peroni 11y ago
  FWIW: Europass CV's generally don't go down well with employers. There's an unfair stigma attached to Europass CV's as the candidates are perceived to be of inferior quality.
  - luso_brazilian 11y ago
    Speaking as an employer: both receiving one through the regular channels and via recruitment agencies I've never seen anyone perceive Europass as anything like you mentioned. Maybe it varies from location to location or with the area of expertise but Europass are pretty much ubiquitous around here.
grimmdude 11y ago
Bootstrap ahoy!
dfrey 11y ago
Obligatory post about how the WTFPL is a poor license choice.
xigency 11y ago
Not to brag, but I have a pretty well put together resume in HTML: http://greg.team-duck.com/resume.html http://greg.team-duck.com/resume.html While almost no one accepts .html as a resumé format and it's difficult to convert to .pdf or .docx seamlessly, it works pretty well for converting to .txt for some job applications. I've thought about making a simple resume builder for this format.
- ricardobeat 11y ago
  I find that format quite heavy, would move education to bottom, trim down each job to tangible achievements/projects completed ("delivered project X using Y" vs "improved features"), remove all stamps & logos, and do away with honors and awards - recruiters in software development are unlikely to be impressed by those unless it's something really big. That would help increase signal vs noise ratio. Granted, the type of CVs I usually look through are for a slightly different skill set but I believe the same reasoning applies.
- Nimitz14 11y ago
  You trying to kill people with text?
tholford 11y ago
Shameless plug for an opinionated pure HTML / CSS resume template: https://github.com/tomholford/html-resume-template https://github.com/tomholford/html-resume-template open to feedback and PRs :)
verusfossa 11y ago
I use fluentcv-cli[0]. Works well, used to be hackmyresume I think. [0]https://www.npmjs.com/package/fluentcv https://www.npmjs.com/package/fluentcv
kmfrk 11y ago
I want to like this, but I don't think it adds anything; you might as well just go with YAML at that point. As an accessibility obsessive, I really don't like the idea of using `code` tags for decorative purposes.
nickthemagicman 11y ago
I really wish this would just output to a json string. Then we can put it through whatever engines we want.
sandworm101 11y ago
A developer who lacks the communication skills necessary to write a resume by hand isn't worth having. They may be great at what they do, but everyone needs to be able to communicate effectively. Any HR department that relies on automated tools, that only reads resumes that match a profile dictated by the needs of an automated reading machine, isn't doing its job. If they are getting too many useless resumes that they need robot to read them, they need to better describe the offerings and/or broadcast to a more focused audience. Announcing jobs to everyone in the world and sifting through the millions of applicants with a machine might make you feel good, it might make you think you are finding the diamond in the rough, but in reality you are selecting candidates almost by lottery.
- lisivka 11y ago
  It even worse: good candidates will avoid expensive application procedure. I spent month on Crossover for senior position: 3 days for test case (dumb but large), then waiting for interview, then again waiting for interview, then interview with a middle which asked me questions "Do you know singleton pattern? Do you know factory pattern". Then they refused me because "unit tests are failed" :-/ I just wrote to my colleague that I am free and got hired. It took about 1 minute. Difference in hourly rates (after taxes and bank commissions): about $1. Will I try to use Crossover again? Never. It is too expensive for me.
- awalGarg 11y ago
  Sorry but I have to disagree with this. Just because I am using a tool to do something doesn't mean I lack the skills to do that thing without the tool. IMHO, it is entirely justified to use as many tools as you want and not do things "by hand" if that saves you time and increases efficiency. As for this specific case, note that the user still would write stuff in sections detailing his/her profile or experience/education etc (which all take markdown as is). The app only really helps with generating the markdown in a pre-structured format, which is easy to edit as well.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    I said not doing the job, nothing about lacking the skills. If HR people are reliant upon mechanical means to read resumes then that is a problem. Maybe the people aren't efficient, maybe their approach to offerings is to broad, or maybe the department is simply understaffed. To say that a department isn't doing its job isn't to say anything about the people in said.
andreineculau 11y ago
I miss the point with this entirely, but for those that are looking for a "input markdown -> output web-friendly/pdf-friendly resumé" head over to my CV repository at https://github.com/andreineculau/cv https://github.com/andreineculau/cv and fork it!
user8341116 11y ago
These all look pretty terrible tbh fam
mwhite 11y ago
Obligatory link to my Markdown resume which converts to PDF (via LaTeX) and HTML using Pandoc: https://github.com/mwhite/resume https://github.com/mwhite/resume
canthonytucci 11y ago
Love it. Back in 2012 I asked @gruber on twitter if he thought it was ok to submit a resume in markdown, his response was: "For the right kind of job, I’d wager it’s an advantage to submit in Markdown."
victorantos 11y ago
A server side implementation(C#) would be nice. I am considering to add this for an angularjs job board [1] [1] https://angjobs.com/#!/jobs/inbox/hn https://angjobs.com/#!/jobs/inbox/hn
zubairq 11y ago
Europe also has NemCV.com. Already in Denmark it is the largest resume provider and has now expanded into Sweden, UK, and Germany soon
chrisdotcode 11y ago
Hey, guys! I'm one of the core collaborators for JSON Resume[0], an alternative to this project. Markdown is cool, but as scrollaway said, > JSON Resume wants to standardize CV fields to improve compatibility between tools, ease conversion, ease theming and such. In fact, we have a notion of "themes", and this sort of markdown-based format can be generated from your JSONResume. We think that JSON is a saner default interchange format than markdown. If you've been following JSONResume development, you might have thought the project died, but myself, along with @aloisdg and others are reviving it and working towards a stable v1.0.0 release. Feel free to suggest changes and make PRs :) [0] - https://github.com/jsonresume https://github.com/jsonresume

255 points by awalGarg 11y ago

Please excuse my questions, I'm old and slow... I see where I can try it myself, can I see one already done (before investing the time to download and try it myself)? As an hourly contractor, everything is a tradeoff w/billable hours.

bsaul 11y ago
Spent some time trying to look for an already filled example as well, so you're not the only one.
awalGarg 11y ago
Apologies but I didn't understand that very well. If you mean where you can see an example CV made from the app, you can checkout mine at https://gist.github.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e https://gist.github.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e I will add a url in the readme as well, thanks!
- mbrutsch 11y ago
  Interesting, thank you.
sveme 11y ago
I'd like to see a sample too - right now, the website looks like it is basically taking the input from the forms and outputs it to markdown? Or is it applying the styling used in the mentioned stackoverflow resume generator? The key to a great markdown-based resume is the subsequent styling, writing lists and headings in markdown isn't a big issue. That's where the other markdown-resume generators break down, I simply did not like the styling and did not want to change all the CSS myself, at the time, needing something decent quickly.

jcadam 11y ago

The site is broken for me in Chrome. Though in any case, I prefer to use LaTeX for my resume -- can't imagine markdown beating that.

awalGarg 11y ago
Hey! It seems like rawgit was having some issues serving the files randomly. I have switched it to use the CDN url instead. Hopefully that shall fix the issue :)
muzani 11y ago
I like LaTeX but it was very tedious for resumes. With resumes, you sometimes want to change the format entirely. LaTeX is great for a consistent format, not so much when experimenting. Markdown also has the benefit of giving you an up to date plaintext resume. I like that a lot, considering a lot of job sites like to automatically (and poorly) convert PDF into plaintext.
- mnw21cam 11y ago
  So LaTeX is perfect for that, since you can change the entire format by changing the content of a function. You did mark up all your entries as function calls, didn't you?

rndstr 11y ago

503 https://rawgit.com/gwendall/way.js/master/way.min.js https://rawgit.com/gwendall/way.js/master/way.min.js

awalGarg 11y ago
I have switched to the cdn url (https://cdn.rawgit.com/gwendall/way.js/master/way.min.js https://cdn.rawgit.com/gwendall/way.js/master/way.min.js). Please let me know if the issue persists, thanks!

seivan 11y ago

Not an expert, correct me if I am wrong here. But I've wrestled with something similar. Be careful not to use REM for font-sizes as @Print ignores them, if you must (and obviously I/Brain must) you could get around by using % (so 1.5 REM -> 150%). Make sure to set font-size on both body and html. Also, not sure how to explain it, but if you open up a PDF in Preview, and select print. You might get a different size/layout and some design issues there. So always double check, but be careful not to use the Printed (Saved from Preview.app) as it disables links. Don't spend any time on CSS transitions, as a PDF won't show them(?) (yep, sigh) Also watch out for printers adding margins both top/bottom and sides.

awjr 11y ago

I have to say that although interesting, you're still in a situation where potential employers will print off copies of your CV and hand them around for people to comment on. The golden rule I stick to is your CV (excluding detailed work history) should fit on one page. I'm not sure this supports this.

ricksplat 11y ago
I go for two pages (two sides of a single page) myself. But I think US resumes are a slightly different concept that goes into exhaustive detail about work history. As somebody that has acted as hiring manager in the past, I definitely preferred the shorter curriculum vitae format - it shows attention to detail and an understanding of what is relevant to the job at hand. I have had feedback on my own CV from time to time that it didn't go into enough detail, so it's horses for courses I suppose ...
- lfowles 11y ago
  In the US, resumes are the short summary and CVs are exhaustive.
- Jemmeh 11y ago
  You've got it backwards. Resumes are typically one page. CVs are detailed. In the USA most places will ask for a one page resume. I've noticed some tech companies want a longer resume or a CV though. http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/cv-vs-resume-difference-and-when-use-which/ http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/cv-vs-resume-difference-an...
- awjr 11y ago
  Oh my CV is 3 pages in length, but you know what I can do and most of where I have worked on the first page. The last 2 pages are detailed breakdowns of where and what I have done.
xeromal 11y ago
Piggy backing on your post. From my experience in the US, most two page resumes can be consolidated down to 1 page. Remove the soft skills like good listener and quick learner, and other extra cruft most soft skill resumes have. A good rule of thumb is 1 page for every 10 years of experience.

mrweasel 11y ago

Apparently we have very different opinions as to what constitutes elegant. I would call the example messy and confusing.

laurent123456 11y ago
Yeah I think it's due to the (mis)use of quoted text to indent some paragraphs, which means there are vertical bars all over the place. The additional horizontal lines don't help much either. I think if he removes that it would look relatively clean, like a README.md on GitHub. Here's the source of the example by the way: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e/raw/09e63fd69f2288cd631a492d392e8d114af7a432/res.md https://gist.githubusercontent.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c9...
awalGarg 11y ago
Hmm, well, noted :) If you could point out some specific elements in the rendered version though, like "not enough spacing" or "that h3 should be an h2", that'd be extremely helpful!
- mrweasel 11y ago
  It's not really that simple. I'm not trying to be dick about, because I do think that resumes from markdown is a good idea. The grey borders/lines, they need to go. They serve no purpose. Contact information goes on top, not buried under the profile. Technologies, can go after the "job description". It makes sense to list them in relation to the jobs though. Know one cares how many time your project was stars or forks your project has. If that was relevant they would have contacted you :) Just link to your GitHub/Bitbucket/whatever- page. Writing and favourites can go, unless you a famous blogger, but then I would just list it as a job. The entire resume takes up to much space. It's country specific, I know, but I think it needs to fit on one A4 page. Personally, I just don't like the layout, sorry.
  - awalGarg 11y ago
    > The grey borders/lines, they need to go. They serve no purpose. Completely agree. While I think it is fair to put a bit of blame of Github's bad rendering (the same markdown looks much better in stackedit's rendering, for instance [1]), but I'd still see how can I preserve the grouping without blockquoting things. I can see the reasoning for rest of the points as well, but to each his own :) [1]: https://stackedit.io/viewer#!url=https://gist.githubusercontent.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e/raw/09e63fd69f2288cd631a492d392e8d114af7a432/res.md https://stackedit.io/viewer#!url=https://gist.githubusercont...

dkhenry 11y ago

Looks good, I wonder how it compares to https://jsonresume.org/ https://jsonresume.org/ One of the things I liked about jsonresume is I could separate the data from the layout.

ytjohn 11y ago
I've had my resume in markdown for a long time, but I have plans to convert it to json resume format as I feel that is the better approach long term.

brianzelip 11y ago

tl;dr - It is a web app that turns form input into a downloadable markdown file. There is a demo w/ live preview that displays the markdown with Bootstrap css. Here's a screenshot, http://imgur.com/qCM0yo2 http://imgur.com/qCM0yo2 The author provides a gist that shows the markdown displayed in GitHub's css, https://gist.github.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e https://gist.github.com/awalGarg/a8e97b27b249f2c94f8e

SixSigma 11y ago

Resume tip : don't say "I was responsible for ...." use the STAR system : Situation, Task, Action, Results While I was part of the Transport Team I reviewed the delivery schedules by analysing historic data in Excel. I was able to reduce transport costs by 10% per year and increase utilisation by 3%. Don't be afraid of : we found that there were no improvements possible which resulted in no extra spending for the coming year.

braythwayt 11y ago
Another way to frame things is: - Where We Were - Where We Needed To Go - How We Got There A variation on this: Visualize being on one side of a chasm. Describe this side of the chasm, emphasizing the bad stuff. Describe why we want to go to the other side, emphasizing the good stuff. Describe the chasm, emphasizing how deep, wide, and impassible it is. Now describe the bridge you built, your role in building it, challenges you faced, &c. But always start with describing both sides and the chasm. You can use any format you like for describing the bridge and your role in building it, the important thing is that the reader has the chasm firmly fixed in their midn while reading about your accomplishment.
cableshaft 11y ago
So what if you were part of a failed startup? You did your job, and did your job pretty well, but the actual products failed to find its audience due to factors (mostly) outside of your control, since you weren't making the decisions on what to make or how to market it? How do you use STAR to not make that sound bad? I think I currently say I delivered the projects on time and on budget and talk about what I was responsible for, and I know I personally gained a lot of experience from the projects, but every time I see STAR suggested, I'm like "Well, if I did that, I'd basically have to say that my work resulted in the company losing money and ultimately folding." I get plenty of attention for my resume as it is, it just always bugged me when people suggest STAR as if it's the only way to write a job description on a resume.
- braythwayt 11y ago
  Situation: When I replaced the VP of Engineering at BloatCo, it had 4,000 engineers, producing a mediocre social media product that was roundly criticized for such failures as being unable to edit posts and having no control over online harassment. Task: Cut costs and get the product and feature pipeline flowing. Action: Implemented a thorough review of functional teams, engaging both front-line management and customer representatives to distinguish the individual and practices that were delivering value from those who weren’t. Established a customer council, including social activist and freedom of speech advocates, to advise on anti-harassment policies. Result: After a painful transition lasting two quarters, we are reviving public kudos on new features and our reputation as a tool for scumbags has been turned around. Our burn rate is down by 40% in engineering, proving that sometimes, you can cut costs and increase production. post scriptum: Alas, this did not increase any advertising revenue, so the company was sold to Yahoo, who fired me and are rewriting everything in Perl 6. But fixing those problems were outside of the scope of my authority.

ryan42 11y ago

I've used Markdown Resume Builder before (http://there4development.com/markdown-resume/ http://there4development.com/markdown-resume/) and aside from sometimes fighting with a few layout issues it is great. From a markdown source file it produces a pretty clean PDF/html version of my resume and can choose from multiple preset styles.

cjauvin 11y ago

The markdown-to-pdf resume toolchain I'm currently using is: (1) Render with https://github.com/joeyespo/grip https://github.com/joeyespo/grip (with a few minor CSS tweaks) (2) "Print" to PDF with Chrome The documents it produces are quite sober, but I find it works very well.

EGreg 11y ago

What would you guys want to see in a blogging platform? Markdown or WYSIWYG? Or both somehow? Git for source control? Or versioning and diffs like wordpress? Themes? Purely css or something more, less secure? How would you want to host it and customize it? Would you want any social features besides roles and permissions? Such as quoting content from others, or pingbacks or something? Finally, generate static files or just cache heavily? I think the latter is better but a script can exist to generate the former on environments where caching infrastructure isn't very robust. Comments - here I would just say use third party javascript based stuff and plop it on the page. It's kind of related to this post but I have built a framework where I could probably make a blogging app like Wordpress in a week.

defiblep 11y ago
Please God, no more blogging platforms....

hellofunk 11y ago

A markdown resume certainly could look simple and elegant, but this tool is nowhere near it.

cies 11y ago

When I think "elegant text", I think Tex. My resume is in Tex (fork it and your may be too). And do not forget to use Sharelatex and you are not installing any software to get a nicely typeset PDF resume. https://github.com/cies/resume https://github.com/cies/resume

joshkpeterson 11y ago
What do you do when someone asks for a Word version of your resume?
mnw21cam 11y ago
Yeah, another comment (now dead) asks what you do when someone asks for a Word format version. My CV (I think that's what you're all talking about - took a little while to work out you weren't actually resuming anything) is in LaTeX format. Places regularly got confused with being sent a PDF, and demanded Word instead, so I would just convert each page to a bitmap and load into a Word document as an image. Inelegant, but functional. Back in the days when I was applying via job agencies, I even had one complain that there was something "wrong" with my Word document, as they couldn't work out how to edit any of it. I told them I thought that was a feature, not a bug.
- jrowley 11y ago
  I don't think I've ever had a place ask me for my resume in word format. The closest is a Microsoft interview where they sent me some forms in docx format that I had to send back filled in. Also you can do some basic conversion from Tex to word using pandoc http://pandoc.org/ http://pandoc.org/
  - RussianCow 11y ago
    I've had a recruiter ask for a Word version of my CV so that he could make minor edits to it for each relevant position, which makes sense. Otherwise, I don't think there's an excuse for not accepting a PDF.

darkhorn 11y ago

https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home you can export it as xml and you can upload it later to update. It sends you a pdf or word file to your email if you want.

luso_brazilian 11y ago

For those in Europe this is already a solved problem: Europass [1] A service kindly provided by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training [2] a European Union's agency. It has a CV builder and outputs an standardized PDF that can even be fed back into the builder for further updates. It is a joy when going through a pile of CVs to read the ones built by that tool, makes the job a lot easier because it allows the applicant to focus on the relevant data instead of on the layout. Better for the RH, better for the applicant, win win all around. [1] https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home [2] http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/ http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/

gervase 11y ago
Is there any reason why this tool can/should only be used by European citizens? Presumably an easy-to-read and nicely formatted resume is something that would be helpful internationally.
- ma2rten 11y ago
  I don't know how big of an issue that is, but in the US there are some different conventions with respect to resumes than in the EU.
Peroni 11y ago
FWIW: Europass CV's generally don't go down well with employers. There's an unfair stigma attached to Europass CV's as the candidates are perceived to be of inferior quality.
- luso_brazilian 11y ago
  Speaking as an employer: both receiving one through the regular channels and via recruitment agencies I've never seen anyone perceive Europass as anything like you mentioned. Maybe it varies from location to location or with the area of expertise but Europass are pretty much ubiquitous around here.

grimmdude 11y ago

Bootstrap ahoy!

dfrey 11y ago

Obligatory post about how the WTFPL is a poor license choice.

xigency 11y ago

Not to brag, but I have a pretty well put together resume in HTML: http://greg.team-duck.com/resume.html http://greg.team-duck.com/resume.html While almost no one accepts .html as a resumé format and it's difficult to convert to .pdf or .docx seamlessly, it works pretty well for converting to .txt for some job applications. I've thought about making a simple resume builder for this format.

ricardobeat 11y ago
I find that format quite heavy, would move education to bottom, trim down each job to tangible achievements/projects completed ("delivered project X using Y" vs "improved features"), remove all stamps & logos, and do away with honors and awards - recruiters in software development are unlikely to be impressed by those unless it's something really big. That would help increase signal vs noise ratio. Granted, the type of CVs I usually look through are for a slightly different skill set but I believe the same reasoning applies.
Nimitz14 11y ago
You trying to kill people with text?

tholford 11y ago

Shameless plug for an opinionated pure HTML / CSS resume template: https://github.com/tomholford/html-resume-template https://github.com/tomholford/html-resume-template open to feedback and PRs :)

verusfossa 11y ago

I use fluentcv-cli[0]. Works well, used to be hackmyresume I think. [0]https://www.npmjs.com/package/fluentcv https://www.npmjs.com/package/fluentcv

kmfrk 11y ago

I want to like this, but I don't think it adds anything; you might as well just go with YAML at that point. As an accessibility obsessive, I really don't like the idea of using `code` tags for decorative purposes.

nickthemagicman 11y ago

I really wish this would just output to a json string. Then we can put it through whatever engines we want.

sandworm101 11y ago

A developer who lacks the communication skills necessary to write a resume by hand isn't worth having. They may be great at what they do, but everyone needs to be able to communicate effectively. Any HR department that relies on automated tools, that only reads resumes that match a profile dictated by the needs of an automated reading machine, isn't doing its job. If they are getting too many useless resumes that they need robot to read them, they need to better describe the offerings and/or broadcast to a more focused audience. Announcing jobs to everyone in the world and sifting through the millions of applicants with a machine might make you feel good, it might make you think you are finding the diamond in the rough, but in reality you are selecting candidates almost by lottery.

lisivka 11y ago
It even worse: good candidates will avoid expensive application procedure. I spent month on Crossover for senior position: 3 days for test case (dumb but large), then waiting for interview, then again waiting for interview, then interview with a middle which asked me questions "Do you know singleton pattern? Do you know factory pattern". Then they refused me because "unit tests are failed" :-/ I just wrote to my colleague that I am free and got hired. It took about 1 minute. Difference in hourly rates (after taxes and bank commissions): about $1. Will I try to use Crossover again? Never. It is too expensive for me.
awalGarg 11y ago
Sorry but I have to disagree with this. Just because I am using a tool to do something doesn't mean I lack the skills to do that thing without the tool. IMHO, it is entirely justified to use as many tools as you want and not do things "by hand" if that saves you time and increases efficiency. As for this specific case, note that the user still would write stuff in sections detailing his/her profile or experience/education etc (which all take markdown as is). The app only really helps with generating the markdown in a pre-structured format, which is easy to edit as well.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  I said not doing the job, nothing about lacking the skills. If HR people are reliant upon mechanical means to read resumes then that is a problem. Maybe the people aren't efficient, maybe their approach to offerings is to broad, or maybe the department is simply understaffed. To say that a department isn't doing its job isn't to say anything about the people in said.

andreineculau 11y ago

I miss the point with this entirely, but for those that are looking for a "input markdown -> output web-friendly/pdf-friendly resumé" head over to my CV repository at https://github.com/andreineculau/cv https://github.com/andreineculau/cv and fork it!

user8341116 11y ago

These all look pretty terrible tbh fam

mwhite 11y ago

Obligatory link to my Markdown resume which converts to PDF (via LaTeX) and HTML using Pandoc: https://github.com/mwhite/resume https://github.com/mwhite/resume

canthonytucci 11y ago

Love it. Back in 2012 I asked @gruber on twitter if he thought it was ok to submit a resume in markdown, his response was: "For the right kind of job, I’d wager it’s an advantage to submit in Markdown."

victorantos 11y ago

A server side implementation(C#) would be nice. I am considering to add this for an angularjs job board [1] [1] https://angjobs.com/#!/jobs/inbox/hn https://angjobs.com/#!/jobs/inbox/hn

zubairq 11y ago

Europe also has NemCV.com. Already in Denmark it is the largest resume provider and has now expanded into Sweden, UK, and Germany soon

chrisdotcode 11y ago

Hey, guys! I'm one of the core collaborators for JSON Resume[0], an alternative to this project. Markdown is cool, but as scrollaway said, > JSON Resume wants to standardize CV fields to improve compatibility between tools, ease conversion, ease theming and such. In fact, we have a notion of "themes", and this sort of markdown-based format can be generated from your JSONResume. We think that JSON is a saner default interchange format than markdown. If you've been following JSONResume development, you might have thought the project died, but myself, along with @aloisdg and others are reviving it and working towards a stable v1.0.0 release. Feel free to suggest changes and make PRs :) [0] - https://github.com/jsonresume https://github.com/jsonresume