4 ms·
"The advice I would give you however is to send your CV as a Word or PDF document and include a link to your LaTeX version." I understand why a recruiter would
by sixtofour 15y ago
"The advice I would give you however is to send your CV as a Word or PDF document and include a link to your LaTeX version."
I understand why a recruiter would want an editable resume (Word), to strip off the candidate's PII and add the recruiter's branding. I don't understand why a hiring company, receiving a resume sent directly from candidate to company, would need an editable resume.
- Peroni 15y agoA lot of organisations have a system/process for dealing with job applicants and most (at least in London) need an editable copy. Plus, as I mentioned in the post, not everyone is familiar with LaTeX so it can be a bit hit or miss.
- zeugma 15y agoThe goal of LaTeX is to output a printable document, most of the time a pdf. I don't think sending the sources is polite nor very readable nevermind HR-compliant.
- Peroni 15y agoFair point. What do you do with a situation where the person receiving the LaTeX CV has never heard of LaTeX though?
- zeugma 15y agoI always sent a PDF file. You can only see that is was made by LaTeX with a trained eye(if their is not too heavy customization) or in the PDF meta-data. Designers would use pre-print tool like inDesign, which output PDF too. PDF document is a problem with big companies portal that only want word document. I tried a few doc converter but they are not Free (as in beer and Freedom) and the result is of course really inferior. Nowadays, I would try html conversion as I think the result can be quite good and readable by most people (even without pdf reader). Also, always have a hard copy of your CV for the interview. Once, the corporate website of a company I applied accepted pdf files, but butchered them via pdf2txt or something like that. Having the right layout to show them saved the day.
- MrKurtHaeusler 15y agoThey won't even know it is a LaTeX CV, to them it will just be another PDF, except a bit better looking.
- spacemanaki 15y agoI think you're confused, or just not familiar with LaTeX. Have you, as a recruiter, ever come across a resume/CV submitted as LaTeX source? I find it hard to believe someone who bothered to lay out their resume/CV in LaTeX could make the mistake of NOT compiling it to a PDF first. edit This is what the output of something like pdflatex would look like: http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf http://tobi.oetiker.ch/lshort/lshort.pdf LaTeX source would be plain text files that look like: https://github.com/latex3/svn-mirror/blob/master/examples/l3keys.tex https://github.com/latex3/svn-mirror/blob/master/examples/l3...
- Peroni 15y agoI should have clarified. I am familiar with LaTeX but I don't see the point in submitting a LaTeX resume if the person receiving it hasn't got a clue what LaTeX is and thinks it's just another albeit prettier PDF document. Seems like a waste of effort.
- pmiller2 15y agoFor me, LaTeX is the simplest way to make a decent-looking PDF with minimal fuss. It's no more work than putting up an HTML CV.
- spacemanaki 15y agoI agree with the other commenter, using LaTeX has nothing to do with impressing the reader with my (shallow) LaTeX skills, and everything to do with not having to deal with something like InDesign or whatever other painful WYSIWYG tool most people use for this kind of thing.
- masterzora 15y agoIt's generally easier to manage a proper resume tailored to each company with a well-structured LaTeX file than with Word. If you want to specifically draw attention to the fact, just toss \LaTeX into skills, though, honestly, most of us familiar with LaTEx can recognise a lot of distinguishing characteristics that few people bother to change. If the person receiving the resume doesn't know what LaTeX is, they still have a relatively portable format and you expended less effort getting it to them. Win/Win.
- hvs 15y agoMy guess is that their recruiting software doesn't handle PDFs correctly. I recently went through a job search and was dumbfounded by the number of places that would only take a Word document.
- esrauch 15y agoI believe Amazon's HR has this issue.
- hapless 15y agoIf they only take a Word document, I don't want the job. It's that simple.
- hvs 15y agoIt's easy to confuse a company with their HR department. Many well known companies that have good reputations in the developer community would only take Word docs.
- hapless 15y agoI don't want a job at a firm where the HR department is free to dictate inflexible procedures to all and sundry. Requiring a Word document to make your internal workflow more comfortable for support personnel is bullshit. The workflow should be optimized for the comfort of candidates and hiring managers, everyone in between exists to serve those people. To put it another way, you're talking about spending $20k+ on the job search itself, then $1-2 million on the employee across his tenure. Finding the right candidate is important. Don't treat me like a temp from ManPower.
- hvs 15y agoI hardly think requiring a Word document is the same as "treating you like a temp from ManPower". Maybe ease up on the hyperbole a bit. We are talking about a file format.
- pagekalisedown 15y agoMy solution is to use Google Docs to convert my resume to whatever format people want, including MS Word.