I don't know that this is the right way to solve the resume 'problem' - I think LaTeX is a far superior choice, yet the author pretty much dimissed it as a possibility.
For me personally, I found LaTeX to be the perfect solution. I have my resume tex setup so I can set toggles to define what gets output. E.g. applying for a manager position, I might keep it brief and more technical.
The resume is modular and can be updated by updating external txt files and not the LaTeX itself. It looks nice, is always consistent, has nice links, etc.
It's optimized for all the ATS nonsense it inevitably gets run through, it generates a PDF, and I've made it near impossible for recruiters to copy and paste and repurpose it without retyping much of it, and I have a tone of tech tricks in their like invisible text that automated systems might see.
If LaTeX itself is sufficient, I can't imagine needing to add in something like Nix and a webserver or how that would be better in any way.
LaTeX is fine to me, as well. Heck, now that I'm older, I think bare TeX is probably fine. In line with what you are saying, I can offload the semantic nature of my resume to text files and just use the markup of TeX to layout how I want the page to look. Much easier if I don't try and have a single source that is both all of my semantic data with the layout at the same time.
I store the customizable data in YAML format and then use mako templates + a python script to transform my custom resume- and cover letter data into Latex | HTML | Plain text
> I think LaTeX is a far superior choice, yet the author pretty much dimissed it as a possibility.
Learning curve is a thing: I've never touched LaTeX, and I don't anticipate using it in the future. If I wanted to automate a thing as a learning project, I probably would rule out LaTeX unless I had a reason to want to learn it.
I’ve actually made the switch over to Typst[0] for my app [1]. I’ve previously used a quick jinja .tex template that then just pasted things in, but LaTeX can really throw some strange errors and overall handling the files was a hassle.
Typst was much easier to setup and the function-based operation meant that sending variables in was a breeze with better error handling there too. Also, I just grok the syntax a lot better.
Just another option for folks looking to redo their resumes/not use Latex.
It took me something like 20min to learn the very basics of Typst and generate a PDF of my resume from my machine (Typst is distributed as a single binary). Definitely a lot easier to work with than LaTeX.
I used this package [1] (see also the index [2] for more packages / templates).
Nix is completely orthogonal to whatever tech you use to build the resume - it's nice as a build tool + to provide dev environments for however you're going to realize your resume.
Nix ≠ NixOS. Nix is a build tool (like make or Ninja or Bazel) with strict isolation of builds and caching of artifacts. NixOS is a distro built on top of that tool, like the BSDs are built on top of make, Gentoo on top of Portage, or gittup[1] on top of tup. Running NixOS while you’re building your resume is irrelevant; using Nix to create the final artifacts is a material statement about the chosen toolset.
I have used LaTeX extensively over the years until Typst came along. Typst is exactly what I need. A lightweight syntax alternative of LaTeX without the issues. It supports SVGs and many more things that are very useful.
I would be careful with LaTeX. I use to have a LaTeX resume generated with LuaTeX. At an old company, I saw my LaTeX resume in the ATS long after I was hired. Apparently, something happened and the PDF displayed as blurred-but-not-unreadable in the ATS. Maybe the ATS did some post-processing or used a limited PDF display engine? Lucky for me, the resume for that job was just a formality. These days, I just use Google Docs and export to PDF.
I don’t know of the example systems but I’ve applied to a handful of companies recently, all running the same-ish workday resume ingestion. You can actually tell which are running a more recent version because the parsing is more accurate.
There is also a common no-account single page application software, I checked at a company I’d applied to and it was called Lever(?)
Normally, I thought for ATS parsing if you upload in an application and a few of the prior experience text boxes are accurate, then you’re good. I’ve always had to fix my experiences though, even with using a word doc.
I have yet to see a really good LaTeX CV. I guess it is possible but in my experience LaTeX just isn't designed for that and gives boring-looking results.
I have yet to see an impressive resume from someone that wasn't boring in layout. Worse, I have seen very few resumes that were not boring in looks that were attached to a good candidate. :(
> I have seen very few resumes that were not boring in looks that were attached to a good candidate
I have seen many. You might be misinterpreting "boring". I don't mean that CVs should be like a Flash website. I mean they should look good typographically and not just like an instruction manual for a washing machine.
I'm somewhat cheating in what I mean here, though. I was thinking of stuff like https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.html, where his CV is so basic in layout that it is kind of shocking. If I remember the CV of most high level faculty I got the chance to look at, none of them were that concerned with columns or typeface. They were, simply, lists of data.
It's a bit different in academia, especially if you are Donald Knuth! When do you think was the last time he sent a CV to a company looking for a job? The 60s?
I agree that most LaTeX CVs are kind of boring. But I think they are more interesting than the end product in TFA, which I found completely underwhelming.
Now I have spent quite a lot of time customizing LaTeX, to the point where people have come to ask how I produced certain documents, because it surely could not be LaTeX. If you have a specific design idea in your head, LaTeX is able to achieve it if you just spend enough time RTFMing.
LaTeX is a nightmare to use, so you shouldn't inflict it on people. While I've used it and there's a lot to like, there's very little there that you'd want or need to make a resume. And without those things (most notably good formula support), it just doesn't add enough to justify the pain of having it in your life.
My resume is in LaTeX, but I like using a nix Flake so I can easily run `nix build` to build the resume, and I've guaranteeably installed the correct version of texlive that I need cuz it's reproducible.
Nix obviously isn't strictly necessary, but making a flake wasn't terribly hard and it's nice to keep stuff standardized between distros and macos.
> It's optimized for all the ATS nonsense it inevitably gets run through
How did you do/test that? I help maintain (didn't author it originally) the AwesomeCV template; we have an open issue about this, inconsistent results and not really having a good way to test it.
I've never tried LaTeX, but I've built my last few resumes with plain old HTML+CSS then saving as PDF. Works pretty great and is insanely simple to upkeep/modify
For me personally, I found LaTeX to be the perfect solution. I have my resume tex setup so I can set toggles to define what gets output. E.g. applying for a manager position, I might keep it brief and more technical.
The resume is modular and can be updated by updating external txt files and not the LaTeX itself. It looks nice, is always consistent, has nice links, etc.
It's optimized for all the ATS nonsense it inevitably gets run through, it generates a PDF, and I've made it near impossible for recruiters to copy and paste and repurpose it without retyping much of it, and I have a tone of tech tricks in their like invisible text that automated systems might see.
If LaTeX itself is sufficient, I can't imagine needing to add in something like Nix and a webserver or how that would be better in any way.