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My resume is in LaTeX, so I thought about adding a single pixel that spams it with every relevant keyword so that it shows up in the PDF for the metadata screen

My resume is in LaTeX, so I thought about adding a single pixel that spams it with every relevant keyword so that it shows up in the PDF for the metadata screener, but I could have plausible deniability if asked about it. I never did that because I figured that it might be a bit dishonest an I don't want a job offer to be rescinded because of it. I never thought about trying to hack the ChatGPT calls.

davidthewatson 2y ago
Me too! I ran into this TeX plugin trying to disembowel context on manjaro this evening. I'd say go for it! I mean, it's asymmetric warfare, right? This went around on HN a few years ago and if coffee stains are a plugin, your pixel-keyword-proxy sounds legit. https://ctan.math.utah.edu/ctan/tex-archive/graphics/pgf/contrib/coffeestains/coffeestains-en.pdf https://ctan.math.utah.edu/ctan/tex-archive/graphics/pgf/con...
- tombert 2y ago
  Well I have a job right now so I'll wait until I'm on the market again; hopefully that's a long ways away, I am tired of switching jobs.
fbdab103 2y ago
I must be missing something - what is the plausible deniability? If someone does a raw text dump of a pdf and gets the hundred new keywords, surely someone would recognize what you did? Or do you just mean, it will silently pass the white text test?
- tombert 2y ago
  I'm saying have an invisible blob in the PDF that wouldn't print out, but would still be in the metadata. I don't think "humans" look at raw text dumps of PDFs do they? I mean, I don't know, when I've interviewed people I only looked at the rendered output. The goal would be to full the robots; for the visible text I would be complete honest. Again, I never actually did it.
  - fbdab103 2y ago
    I get the trick, I am just disputing that you have any deniability if caught. As to the text dumping -I have no idea. I could believe some of the HR screening tools select all text and dump into some structured fields for review. Probably not, and the trick will go completely undetected.
  - walteweiss 2y ago
    What if you add your text back on white, but outside of your PDF bounds? Some software (I know Adobe Illustrator has it for sure) allow you to design it so, that the visible part would be one, and everything outside the bounds would be in the document, but isn’t visible neither to a person, nor to the printer. The software would see it. I bet it should work, and I think I’ll try that when I’m at the job hunt myself.
- netsharc 2y ago
  I suppose OP can claim "Huh, I don't know, must be a bug in the software I'm using." (there's been cases where MS Word kept deleted text in the Word file, yes I know a CV is usually PDF, but hey, maybe my homebrew PDF generator is buggy!) And I wonder if this argument would fly, e.g. in a court of law: "the information I would like to convey to HR is the one that is readable by human eyes when my CV is rendered by a normal PDF reader (e.g. insert known PDF readers here), anything that is not readable by the human eyes should not be considered part of my CV.".
grtrthnstupid 2y ago
FYI I am working with a professional placement agency and I used to use LaTeX. The specific feedback I received regarding my resume is that modern resume parsers are MUCH better at reading from docx than pdf. So, to increase my chances, I had to give up LaTeX. Unless you are trying to impress a specific employer whom you know is not putting your resume through an automated screener
- tombert 2y ago
  That makes sense. The main reason I don’t use docx for that stuff (outside of not wanting to pay for a license for mediocre software) is that I used to have a big problem with recruiters destroying all the formatting of my resume by inserting their ugly logo on the top. PDFs are harder to modify like that, and if they insisted on it in docx I could say “oh I can’t do that because it’s in LaTeX, here’s a link to the source though and make any changes you need”. None of them ever once actually attempted to ruin the resume again.
  - walteweiss 2y ago
    FYI Libre Office can save files in docx, so you don’t have to pay for mediocre software. Google Docs also allows you to download the document in that format. So, you can even do the resume job from your mobile.
    - tombert 2y ago
      Yeah I know, I have LibreOffice installed, and it's "generally ok" for docx stuff, though I will still have issues with more subtle formatting things, though that could be because I use WYSIWYG editors so infrequently that I don't really know what I'm doing anymore. Pandoc + LaTeX has been generally "good enough" for everything I've needed so I don't have much of an incentive to learn.

davidthewatson 2y ago

Me too! I ran into this TeX plugin trying to disembowel context on manjaro this evening. I'd say go for it! I mean, it's asymmetric warfare, right? This went around on HN a few years ago and if coffee stains are a plugin, your pixel-keyword-proxy sounds legit. https://ctan.math.utah.edu/ctan/tex-archive/graphics/pgf/contrib/coffeestains/coffeestains-en.pdf https://ctan.math.utah.edu/ctan/tex-archive/graphics/pgf/con...

tombert 2y ago
Well I have a job right now so I'll wait until I'm on the market again; hopefully that's a long ways away, I am tired of switching jobs.

fbdab103 2y ago

I must be missing something - what is the plausible deniability? If someone does a raw text dump of a pdf and gets the hundred new keywords, surely someone would recognize what you did? Or do you just mean, it will silently pass the white text test?

tombert 2y ago
I'm saying have an invisible blob in the PDF that wouldn't print out, but would still be in the metadata. I don't think "humans" look at raw text dumps of PDFs do they? I mean, I don't know, when I've interviewed people I only looked at the rendered output. The goal would be to full the robots; for the visible text I would be complete honest. Again, I never actually did it.
- fbdab103 2y ago
  I get the trick, I am just disputing that you have any deniability if caught. As to the text dumping -I have no idea. I could believe some of the HR screening tools select all text and dump into some structured fields for review. Probably not, and the trick will go completely undetected.
- walteweiss 2y ago
  What if you add your text back on white, but outside of your PDF bounds? Some software (I know Adobe Illustrator has it for sure) allow you to design it so, that the visible part would be one, and everything outside the bounds would be in the document, but isn’t visible neither to a person, nor to the printer. The software would see it. I bet it should work, and I think I’ll try that when I’m at the job hunt myself.
netsharc 2y ago
I suppose OP can claim "Huh, I don't know, must be a bug in the software I'm using." (there's been cases where MS Word kept deleted text in the Word file, yes I know a CV is usually PDF, but hey, maybe my homebrew PDF generator is buggy!) And I wonder if this argument would fly, e.g. in a court of law: "the information I would like to convey to HR is the one that is readable by human eyes when my CV is rendered by a normal PDF reader (e.g. insert known PDF readers here), anything that is not readable by the human eyes should not be considered part of my CV.".

grtrthnstupid 2y ago

FYI I am working with a professional placement agency and I used to use LaTeX. The specific feedback I received regarding my resume is that modern resume parsers are MUCH better at reading from docx than pdf. So, to increase my chances, I had to give up LaTeX. Unless you are trying to impress a specific employer whom you know is not putting your resume through an automated screener

tombert 2y ago
That makes sense. The main reason I don’t use docx for that stuff (outside of not wanting to pay for a license for mediocre software) is that I used to have a big problem with recruiters destroying all the formatting of my resume by inserting their ugly logo on the top. PDFs are harder to modify like that, and if they insisted on it in docx I could say “oh I can’t do that because it’s in LaTeX, here’s a link to the source though and make any changes you need”. None of them ever once actually attempted to ruin the resume again.
- walteweiss 2y ago
  FYI Libre Office can save files in docx, so you don’t have to pay for mediocre software. Google Docs also allows you to download the document in that format. So, you can even do the resume job from your mobile.
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah I know, I have LibreOffice installed, and it's "generally ok" for docx stuff, though I will still have issues with more subtle formatting things, though that could be because I use WYSIWYG editors so infrequently that I don't really know what I'm doing anymore. Pandoc + LaTeX has been generally "good enough" for everything I've needed so I don't have much of an incentive to learn.