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Rustdoc résumé

paulgb 2021-08-16 14:27:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

As usual with quirky resumes, I think a lot of people are missing the point. Nobody is suggesting that we all start using rustdoc for our resumes.

It's a fun, different way of presenting a resume. The fact that it made it to the front page of HN means it worked at what it was intended to do: be seen by a bunch of prospective employers and stand out.

PragmaticPulp 2021-08-16 15:24:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Nobody is suggesting that we all start using rustdoc for our resumes.

Maybe nobody is suggesting it, but these clever resume formats tend to inspire a lot of copycats in my experience.

When infographic resumes went through waves of popularity on social media I started receiving a lot of poorly constructed infographic-style resumes. Most of them came from junior candidates who thought they were going to stand above the crowd and impress us with their ingenuity. Maybe 1 out of every 10 was actually well-designed. The rest were just needlessly cryptic and failed to deliver the information I actually needed to see in a resume format. For example, I don’t want to see that someone rates themselves as 4/5 stars in Python. I need to see some text that explains their Python experience.

After reading 50 resumes in a row, the last thing I want to do is parse my way through non-standard resume formats.

This Rustdoc resume comes close to looking like a normal resume, which is good, but I would strongly suggest the author add a link at the beginning to a regular PDF resume that can be downloaded and shared.

The full resume should expand on the normal resume points, such as explaining their role and responsibilities at their current job and adding dates to employment ranges.

chc 2021-08-16 18:09:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Like 90% of the job interviews I've been to have asked me something along the lines of "rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 on these technologies," so maybe you don't want to see 4/5 stars in Python, but it does seem to be a pretty common wish.

teddyh 2021-08-16 18:37:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The interviewer asking the question and the person reading the résumé are not looking for the same information, and may often be entirely different people.

paulgb 2021-08-16 18:46:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

IMHO as an interviewer, when I see these: the rank-order is useful, so that if you put C++ first I might ask you a different question than if you put Python. But the absolute star ratings are just noise; most candidates just use an implicitly-ranked list which is a more concise way of communicating the same information.

I've never asked a candidate to rank themselves on a skill out of 10, that seems like a low-signal way to filter for overconfident people.

fecak 2021-08-16 14:11:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Professional resume writer here. Quick review.

We don't use first person voice on resumes. We use 'implied first person' (no 'I'). So "Former emergency response driver..."

Mentioning a Twitter handle is only useful if your Twitter has things you'd want people to see.

The professional experience section (Modules here) should be in reverse chronological order - so most recent first. It would be useful to say something that you did while working for RustMinded and maybe tell the reader who the company is. So it might look like:

Software Developer, Rustminded $DATE_- present

RustMinded is a Belgian startup dedicated to the promotion of the Rust language.

As others have said, I don't really get the fascination with LaTeX. I get a lot of incoming resumes from my tech clients that are written in LaTeX. It feels more like "I built it using LaTeX to try and impress you" than "it's the best tool for the job".

The project sections are mostly OK other than some language issues.

dcminter 2021-08-16 15:03:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> We don't use first person voice on resumes. We use 'implied first person' (no 'I').

Who is "we" here? I've always had good results with a first person CV - so far in the US, the UK, and the EU. Maybe I just get away with it by luck or circumstance, but it's clearly not a set-in-stone requirement.

> It feels more like "I built it using LaTeX to try and impress you" than "it's the best tool for the job".

Anecdotally a friend who at that time worked at Sun Microsystems told me that his team prioritised CVs created with LaTeX over all others.

After all, if the purpose of a CV is not to "try and impress you" then what is it?

fecak 2021-08-16 15:14:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Not using "I" on a resume is pretty much the first rule of resume writing. If you were to search for rules of resume writing, I expect that would probably appear on every article. If you've had good results with a first person CV, that's probably because your experience is strong enough that the reader forgives you for the error.

Of course you 'can' write a resume in first person. It's just not the voice that the reader expects. Similar to third person.

A resume is certainly meant to try and impress the reader, but typically we're trying to impress the reader with professional accomplishments. I'm much more impressed by someone's professional accomplishments than their choice to use LaTeX.

volta83 2021-08-16 16:10:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Since you are openly advocating for people to blindly follow this rule… can you at least explain _why_ do you think this rule makes sense and people should follow it.

When I hire, I couldn’t care less about whether the person uses I or We.

fecak 2021-08-17 12:44:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Search for "should I use first person on resume", the articles will explain a bit. One reason is brevity - we want to use as few words as possible.

The other is redundancy - if we use "I", chances are almost every sentence will begin with "I". I did this, I did that.

thom 2021-08-17 13:59:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm caught between thinking you'd have to be a loon to make hiring decisions on this basis, and wanting to punish the fewer than 10% of people in my inbox that actually follow this advice for having no critical thinking skills of their own.

fecak 2021-08-17 14:22:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If you're saying less than 10% of the resumes you get are written in implied first person, I find that incredibly hard to believe. I work with easily 1000 clients a year (most in tech), and the 'before' resumes sent to me by clients are at least 95%+ in implied first person.

thom 2021-08-17 16:19:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Going to walk back my 10% here, that's just the number that don't use 'I' somewhere in their CV. There are many that just do it in an intro or elsewhere, but list projects or contributions in implied first person. Some are an ungodly amalgamation of both (I know my LinkedIn profile certainly is, but that was created under duress). I am fine with either, I just don't understand the idea that a recruiter is going to clutch their pearls at this. Anyway, my original question was genuine, I'd be fascinated to see some controlled study into this, which I understand would be hard to engineer.

volta83 2021-08-18 11:22:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I still fail to see the value in filtering out candidates by whether they know this rule that still nobody has given any actual arguments for.

"If you Google this string, you'll find the arguments" is a logical fallacy. You are claiming that there are arguments for why this rule is true, but not providing any. If anything, the only thing this statement proofs is that you are not able to explain why doing this is even a good idea.

And FWIW, I actually google this and none of the first 5 results actually explained why this rule makes sense. They were all posts of the form "20 rules to blindly follow when writing a resumee".

fecak 2021-08-18 13:23:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Where do you see anyone suggesting that we actually "filter out" candidates because they use "I"? Nowhere in this thread have I suggested that in any way.

In other parts of this thread, I've explained why we don't use I. Let me gather them for you.

1 - Redundancy. Imagine a list of bullets that start with the word "I".

- I wrote a playbook for product implementations.

- I managed the project...

- I oversaw a team that...

Hopefully by now you see this wouldn't be a fun read.

2 - Necessity - The resume is about you, not others, so we don't need to say that you (I) did the things on the resume. That is understood, and why 'implied' first person fulfills our needs while also reducing the content. If I ask you what you did today, you can just say "Watched TV, mowed the lawn, ..." - you don't need to say "I watched TV, and then I mowed the lawn."

I hope this helps, and maybe we can put this to bed.

thom 2021-08-18 23:34:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If they don't filter it out... why should anyone care? Kinda feels like you sent off for a "become a resume writer in 24 hours" kit and segued from there into being an internet bore who thinks he's a brand. Literally all your comments on HN are "RESUME WRITER HERE!" as if that's anything other than a recruiter who found an easier scam. I've no doubt there's money in it, but realistically you could just be the identity function and still place almost all your customers.

fecak 2021-08-19 11:02:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You've decided to get personal. Will top candidates be filtered out based on some issues related to breaking resume norms? Probably not. Bill Gates could write a resume on a napkin in ketchup and get an interview.

It mainly makes a difference for candidates in more competitive situations - give a recruiter two resumes with somewhat parallel experience, and the better resume (based on writing style, obeying stylistic norms, etc.) is probably more likely to get the interview.

As for a "scam", my results are hard to argue with, and most clients seem to think the investment was a good one. Many of my clients come to me after having failed to get interviews for their dream jobs, and after working with me their fortunes often change. Many of my clients approach me trying to get jobs at places like FAANG companies, while many others just are looking to work at places most people have never heard of.

Would you like to be done now? We both have better things to do.

dcminter 2021-08-16 16:38:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

A not-very-thorough search for CV and Resumé writing and skimming through the results and I don't find anyone mentioning the importance of avoiding the first person.

That actually surprises me, because while I don't think it's good advice I did think it was common.

fecak 2021-08-17 12:57:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I did a quick search, and the results surprised me too. After reading a couple of the articles, I was less surprised, because they weren't good. Try a search for "should I use first person on resume" (no quotes). That search turned up more of what I expected.

The #1 result in my "rules for resume writing" search did mention first person.

dcminter 2021-08-17 16:11:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I agree that they weren't particularly good pieces of advice. However I think it gives the lie to your assumption that this is a given.

fecak 2021-08-17 16:50:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Part of me thinks that the rule is so well-known that the writers didn't both to include it. Like "don't use a handwritten resume" isn't something we need to tell readers.

I could be wrong about that, but the data doesn't lie. I've read far more resumes than the average human being - 20 years in recruiting, 7 years as a resume writer, thousands of writing clients - and definitely <10% of the resumes I receive from clients include the word "I" anywhere at all.

If it's not a given, I guess it would be one heckuva coincidence that 90%+ of the tens of thousands of resumes I've seen all don't use "I".

dcminter 2021-08-17 17:15:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Again, "unusual" and "bad" are not the same thing.

You've laid it down as the prime consideration for writing a CV and given no evidence that it's even important! You may be right, but you haven't shown that you're right even anecdotally. Strongly held beliefs are fine, but they're not evidence.

fecak 2021-08-17 18:02:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I don't think I used "bad" anywhere, but it's something we're generally told not to do. If you Google that specific question about first person, you will likely get the answer "don't do that". (I ran a few searches like this myself already). "The prime consideration" is a bit strong.

Can you be successful with a first person resume? Yes. You can also be success with a third person resume, or a resume that is web-based and includes only a list of links to your code repos.

My evidence is from reading resumes every day of my life for 20 years. Tens of thousands from people all over the world. You can call that anecdotal.

The thing is there are no "official" rules for resumes like there would be for haiku or sonnet. It's not that kind of writing, but there are norms.

As another example of a norm, an experience section is written in reverse chronological order (most recent experience first). Have I ever seen someone write it another way? Of course. But that is also incredibly uncommon.

We typically put contact info at the top. Can you put it on the bottom? Maybe even on the last page? Sure. But that would be unusual, and the reader may be inclined to thinking that you don't know how to write a resume.

I think I've used up all my energy in talking about resumes today, and I need to go write some resumes. Enjoy your day.

dcminter 2021-08-17 18:53:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Ok, you didn't say it was bad, that was my inference and evidently my mistake.

But if it's just common, well, it's an odd piece of advice for someone who has literally formatted their CV as a programming language's reference document!

Edit: Oh, and thanks for your patience and for engaging.

My apologies for taxing your energy supplies and more power to your elbow in crafting supplications ;)

thom 2021-08-16 16:43:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What’s the basis for this advice? Have you tested A/B tested it with your clients?

dcminter 2021-08-16 16:47:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

In fairness, A/B testing this approach would be ethically very iffy, particularly if they believe it makes a difference!

2021-08-16 21:50:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

fecak 2021-08-17 12:45:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Nope. The results my clients get with my resumes are enough proof for me.

dcminter 2021-08-17 16:15:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Before sending off my CV I always spin around three times and say a prayer to Russel's Teapot. The results I get with this practice are enough proof for me.

Ok, it's not an extraordinary stretch to imagine that your form might help, but all you've actually demonstrated is that it's not catastrophically damaging!

thom 2021-08-17 13:29:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

But you're sure that not using the first person is a big component of that?

fecak 2021-08-17 14:30:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]

We may have some kind of disconnect. The most common resume is written in "implied first person", and not "first person", so the "I" in most lines is implied. Examples:

Developed a web app in Python that ....

Authored a playbook for...

So it's still considered "first person" by most, but the pronoun is dropped.

Can I be sure that no using "I" on resumes is a "big component" for my success? Of course I can't be 100% sure, and my ability to highlight accomplishments is probably far more important.

But I was a recruiter for 20 years, and I know that 95% of resumes I saw during my career (easily in the tens of thousands) were written in implied first person, and when you send someone a resume that continuously uses "I" it is a bit of a shock to the system (just as it would be to see third person).

I'll tell you what, let's save us both some time. Go to Google and just search "resume", and use image search. I just went through the first page of results, and I didn't see a single resume written in first person (using "I"). Not one.

thom 2021-08-17 15:59:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I know that lots of people who sell CV advice on the internet say this, I just find it such a bafflingly trivial piece of advice that it's strange to have strong feelings about it. Most CVs aren't written like this and I don't find myself marking them down for writing like a normal person. Maybe this is a US thing (although I have lots of US people's CVs to look at) but the idea that anyone would be shocked at seeing "I" in a CV is just nuts, and honestly, if someone filters on minutiae like that you wouldn't really want to work for them anyway.

fecak 2021-08-17 16:56:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I've written for at least a thousand international clients, hundreds in the UK, and this doesn't seem to be a US thing based on the resumes/CVs I see.

I'm not saying people are filtering on seeing "I", but they would be surprised in the same way they would be by seeing third person "Thom is a CTO with..." on a CV.

I have no agenda here. I'm just telling you the facts from someone who has probably read far more resumes than most others. You don't need to accept my expertise. Again, run a google image search on resumes, tell me how many you see with the word 'I'.

You clearly don't value my experience. That's OK. I'm not some advocate for first person pronouns - it doesn't help me in any way that resumes are written in this manner. I'm just explaining to you that it's a fact.

thom 2021-08-17 17:08:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

But you're not, you're explaining that it's a commonly held opinion. I'm just intrigued what the basis for that opinion is other that 'oh, everyone says to do that'. Maybe you're not curious about literally the number one piece of advice you give in your job, but I would be.

fecak 2021-08-17 18:35:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]

A search on Google of the words "resume first person" (without quotes) will help, with the first 10 answers pretty much unanimously agreeing with my belief. I've explained why in other responses (mostly redundancy - "I did this, I did that" gets old.

This isn't the #1 piece of advice I give in my job. I'm a writer. I write the documents. I'm not telling them what to do.

I do offer review services, which are a small part of my business. If I get a resume with the word "I" for a review, I will tell them what I've told you.

You seem intent on belittling what I do, as if my job is to walk around telling people "don't use I".

thom 2021-08-17 19:07:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You're the one that led with that! If I were a professional internet comment writer, I'd have told you how obnoxious that was, but alas, I am merely an amateur.

monocasa 2021-08-16 19:31:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I've heard both equally strongly. That 'I' is a big no no, and not using 'I' is a sign of the fact that you didn't actually contribute anything and you're riding on the coattails of your team as the 'useless group project member'.

fecak 2021-08-17 14:32:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You can write about accomplishments without using the word I. The I is implied.

Wrote an iOS game that earned $10M in revenue and had 50K downloads.

There is no I there, and I don't think you'd argue that this person contributed.

monocasa 2021-08-17 17:16:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]

In the context of how most of us on HN work on teams it's a lot harder to talk about professional accomplishments that way.

If you were at iPhone game co on a team and had "wrote an iOS game that earned $10m in revenue an had 50k downloads" there are absolutely people out there that read that as a team accomplishment that's suspicious that you didn't use 'I' to describe what you actually did.

fecak 2021-08-17 18:07:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I was trying to be simple and now we've reached the pedantic stage.

If it was a team effort, we may use "Contributed to development of an iOS game that earned $10M in revenue.".

If it was an individual effort, the bullet I wrote earlier could included a term to clarify that, like "Independently...".

As for 'us on HN', about 100 HN users hire me every year. I even have a discount code for HN users on my HN page here (I got 3 HN orders in the past two days, probably from people reading this thread). I'm familiar with how to write accomplishments on resumes, for HN users and others.

monocasa 2021-08-17 18:15:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I said at the beginning that there's two camps who equally hold opposite beliefs. Just because you've made a career catering to one camp doesn't mean the other camp isn't out there.

fecak 2021-08-17 18:50:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I've been in the resume game in one way or another for 20+ years, have published countless articles about resumes on various websites, and written for thousands of clients from all over the world. I've never witnessed anything resembling "the other camp". I've never had a client question the "I" advice - not once.

You can say it exists, but it would be nearly impossible for me to spend an entire career in this field and not ever come across it.

monocasa 2021-08-17 19:14:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Your clients by definition don't have strong feelings on the format for a resume and accept what you tell them.

You writing countless articles about what you think doesn't preclude the idea that people out there think differently.

Meanwhile I've personally seen it in hiring committees in every job I've worked for about 15 years now. I actively shut down that line of thinking in said committees (from both directions), and it's not difficult to do because you get a group of five people or so together in a committee and that's normally enough for there to be differing opinions on the matter. "Look, even in this small group, of people we've hired and trust to make good hiring decisions, there's mutually exclusive ideas on what you're 'supposed to do'. So obviously we throw out both ideas and accept whatever in this case since it's completely orthogonal".

I personally take your approach since it's around 75%/25%, and the numbers work in favor, but there's absolutely the other camp out there.

fecak 2021-08-17 20:40:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You're making some assumptions about people you know nothing about. Some of my clients do have strong feelings on various resume topics, but they know I'm good at what I do and want my opinion. They don't always agree or accept what I tell them.

I'm really not sure what you're talking about with hiring committees, but if you're saying that some people are eliminating candidates because they did or didn't use personal pronouns, I think that's well beyond the scope of what I've been saying. I'm not suggesting applicants who use "I" should be eliminated from contention.

lstamour 2021-08-16 16:14:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

To echo that, it’s not that the resume authoring doesn’t matter, but saying you made it in LaTeX is better said in the cover letter where you can highlight how that’s relevant to the role or why you did so.

Most resumes are processed and chopped up by ancient applicant tracking systems, so you sometimes have to stick to the facts in a resume with a plain layout. These ATS systems rank resumes by relevance, generally based on job ad keyword matching and matching against some synonyms not mentioned in the ad.

I’ve had early success with a less traditional resume layout but I know I was picked due to relevant experience even then. Experience, relevance and luck/perseverance are probably the three keys to landing a job quickly.

bennylope 2021-08-16 14:35:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> As others have said, I don't really get the fascination with LaTeX.

I have gone down this path with other types of documents (reports, proposals) not because I love LaTeX but because I hate composing and editing in Word, etc. Especially for long lived or repeated documents. Some of those tech clients might just prefer working with plain text for editing, source control, and/or version branching.

kemiller2002 2021-08-16 14:46:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You've never really "lived" until you realize that your document with the different sections, etc. that you've painstakingly setup is broken because of a copy paste issue when adding a new section. LaTex maybe a pain, but at least the output is consistent. There is no magic where the formatting bleeds over due to something you can't see on screen.

thrwyoilarticle 2021-08-16 16:05:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Underfull \hbox (badness 10000)?

im3w1l 2021-08-16 17:24:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The odt format is xml in a zip and simple enough that you can hand edit it if you really want to.

dhosek 2021-08-16 15:31:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I used to do my resume in a custom TeX format.¹ It looked gorgeous. But because so much of tech world hiring is mediated by recruiters and automated resume ingestion systems, having a straightforward document in Word ended up serving me much better.

1. An ancient resume macro (and an ancient resume) that I made while a freshman in college is on CTAN. What I used in my early career was not that, although I doubt I have any relic of that later file anymore.

cookieswumchorr 2021-08-16 14:49:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I never had the time/brains to get past the learn curve with LaTeX. Recently I started using a pipeline of markdown to html with Pandoc and then to pdf with Dompdf for project documentation.

Turns out you get neatly formatted printable docs with not so much effort, and the raw markdown stays with the code where it can be used and updated by fellow devs

jjjbokma 2021-08-16 18:16:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Fwiw, I have made a LaTeX resume template [1] for Pandoc. Input is markdown and output is LaTeX or LaTeX rendered to PDF.

[1] https://github.com/john-bokma/resume-pandoc

cies 2021-08-16 16:48:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> I built it using LaTeX to try and impress you

I built my LaTeX resume trying to impress a potential employer yeeears ago. So far it's really easy to keep up to date and to temporarily remove parts (comment them out). I think the end result looks a bit more professionally type-set than a Word/GDocs creation.

xondono 2021-08-16 15:18:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> As others have said, I don't really get the fascination with LaTeX

LaTex is really powerful when you get to a certain point, but unless you’ve tinkered with it until you reach that point, it’s a PITA.

To me the number 1 advantage is that I can easily keep updated various versions of the CV, because by working at startups I’ve always have to wear a lot of hats. I keep a more ‘hardware oriented’ CV, another more ‘software oriented’ CV, and I added a more “management” version that showcases better team leadership instead on focusing on the tech stack.

It’s also very handy to keep everything as text documents when you are asked to submit to different webforms, and being able to adjust things like quality vs pdf size is important when submitting your CV in some places

dvdkon 2021-08-16 14:40:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I don't think a novelty résumé needs to be so conventional, people will mostly, in my opinion, either dislike it for not following layout/organisation conventions or look past all that altogether.

fecak 2021-08-16 14:43:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

For someone like this with little experience, being unconventional is probably OK because they aren't being judged by the same criteria as an experienced hire. That said, you can be unconventional and still provide the reader with the basic facts they'd want to know (like 'what are your accomplishments?' or 'did you attend school?').

baby 2021-08-16 15:13:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> We don't use first person voice on resumes. We use 'implied first person' (no 'I'). So "Former emergency response driver..."

Sorry but no, that’s bad advice.

fecak 2021-08-17 12:48:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I've written thousands of resumes, and all written using implied first person. My results are pretty consistent with hundreds of clients getting jobs at many of the most selective employers in the world.

I appreciate your response, but implied first person is the industry standard, and has been for as long as I've been in business.

baby 2021-08-17 18:22:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I screen and read resumes as part of my job. Never heard someone who cared about that. This is just not something people look at in resumes unless they’re looking for non technical people perhaps.

sampo 2021-08-16 19:03:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> It feels more like "I built it using LaTeX to try and impress you"

It's not meant to impress you, a resume writer. It's meant to impress other techies.

fecak 2021-08-17 12:55:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Correct. The "you" here isn't actually "me" (the writer), but rather the decision maker (the recruiter or hiring manager).

teakettle42 2021-08-17 17:32:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Well, I can tell you that, relying on the experience of my own 30 year career using and reading LaTeX resumes, you're quite wrong. I appreciate a LaTeX resume because:

1. It's almost always much more readable than a Word document.

2. It's not about impressing people. It's about readability for the reader, and maintainability (by avoiding finicky and annoying WYSIWYG editing) for the author.

If using a LaTeX resume means self-selecting out of resume-grinding HR departments that require Word documents — and/or annoying entirely useless tech recruiters — that's a feature, not a bug.

UnpossibleJim 2021-08-16 18:38:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Out of sheer curiosity (and this has nothing to do with the conversation at large), how does one become a "professional resume writer"? Is that a recruiter who helps write resumes, or are you solely focused on resume writing? Is it a side gig, or do you do enough resume writing to make it a full time job?

I apologize if these are well known answers but I stick with a fairly technical crowd and, well word of mouth usually gets us passed around to be brutally honest. I hate to admit it, but a half way legible resume and it's usually just references after a point =/

fecak 2021-08-17 12:53:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I was a recruiter for 20 years, and I've always been a strong writer. As a recruiter I read tens (perhaps hundreds?) of thousands of resumes, and I knew the audience. I had always done some resume editing or helping my candidates with their resumes, and I decided I wanted to see if I could support myself as a writer instead of a recruiter.

I do quite well as a writer. My hourly rate is $100/hr, I also offer flat rate services, and for the past few years I've consistently had a roster of anywhere from 30-40 clients at any given time.

My clientele is about 50% tech, as that's my specialty and I was a tech recruiter for my entire recruiting career. Word of mouth does sometimes get you by if you have a good network. There are quite a few reasons people hire a resume writer. Some just simply struggle to write. Some struggle to understand what the reader wants to know. Some aren't comfortable taking credit for their accomplishments, so a writer makes it feel less 'braggy'.

I hope I answered your questions.

UnpossibleJim 2021-08-17 20:51:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You absolutely did. Thank you. I wasn't trying to be flippant, I was genuinely curious.

foldr 2021-08-16 14:23:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Grammar nitpick: first person is not a voice.

bradrn 2021-08-16 14:27:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Furthermore, I’d describe GP’s comment as encouraging ‘pro-drop’ rather than any ‘voice’. (Though I suspect the technical details of syntactic terminology are somewhat irrelevant for résumé-writing.)

foldr 2021-08-16 14:45:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm afraid pro drop isn't technically right either, for a couple of reasons :D First, English doesn't have pro drop. Second, there's more than just the subject missing in "Former emergency response driver...". If you read it as elliptical of a sentence, then the sentence is something like "I am a former emergency response driver...". If English had pro drop, pro drop would give you "Am a former emergency response driver..."

bradrn 2021-08-16 14:53:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> English doesn't have pro drop

Depends on the situation! For me it’s grammatical in most informal texts, e.g. emails. (Also, the first sentence of this paragraph.)

> Second, there's more than just the subject missing in "Former emergency response driver...".

This is a good point; I did indeed miss this subtlety. (Actually, it’s not even very subtle!) In this case, I must admit to being unsure about how to analyse this.

foldr 2021-08-16 14:59:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]

>Depends on the situation! For me it’s grammatical in most informal texts, e.g. emails. (Also, the first sentence of this paragraph.)

This isn't technically pro drop. It's a different process called "diary drop". By coincidence I wrote a rant about this only a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28127035

bradrn 2021-08-16 15:03:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Huh, interesting — thanks for the pointer! I’ve been wondering about this for a while. Do you happen to have any more resources? (I enjoy linguistics, but haven’t really read much about syntax; my favourite topic is morphosyntactic alignment.)

foldr 2021-08-16 15:11:09 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It’s hard to find any good scholarly references on the differences between pro drop and diary drop (I guess because they are uncontroversial and not particularly subtle). However, section 4.2.1 of this MA dissertation has a decent, though very brief, summary: https://awweir.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/weir-ug-diss.pdf Similar observations are also made in the following paper: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/76381796.pdf

bradrn 2021-08-16 15:17:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Again, thanks! I’ll read through these when I get some time.

2021-08-16 14:40:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

_moof 2021-08-16 18:48:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Ugh, LaTeX resumes. They're a dime a dozen (I've interviewed hundreds of engineers) and they utterly fail to make people stand out, which is the whole point of a resume. When I get a resume that was done in LaTeX from someone who isn't a mathematician, it makes a bad impression. I'm not saying that's right, or fair, but it's true. It comes off as trying to look smart without the substance to back it up, and because so many people do it, it also comes off as really unoriginal, and makes the resume forgettable.

So please everyone, stop with the performative LaTeX. If you had any idea how many people do this, you'd be embarrassed.

(And to add a dash of humility to this comment, I'll confess that I used to write my resume in LaTeX. After seeing how many other people do too, I stopped.)

anchpop 2021-08-17 00:15:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I don’t have a math background but I learned LaTeX out of necessity. If I needed a resume I might use it just because it seems easier than messing with Word. It’s not like LaTeX is that hard to use so I don’t see why you see it as performative.

actually_a_dog 2021-08-16 14:18:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

My impression: this is cute, but confusing. I don't like having to mentally translate things like "modules" and "constants" into headings that would appear in a resume.

pkolaczk 2021-08-17 08:11:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If the resume has a good content, the only rule IMHO is it needs to be easy to read. It doesn't matter if you use LaTeX, Rustdoc, MS Word, Libre Office, HTML or markdown as long as I can quickly get all the information I want.

When I dealt with hiring for my team, I've never paid any attention to the formatting. Making formatting stand out from other resumes did not increase the chances for the resume to be picked and moved to the next stage. It did decrease them though, if crazy formatting made it harder to read.

Using Rustdoc might be "clever", but I don't find this resume very readable honestly. It took me some time to figure out what modules or structs mean in this context. Don't do this. Recruiters have really little time and they often get hundreds of resumes. If they can't get the essential information quickly enough, they'll just throw it out.

What makes an outstanding resume is in the content and how well it matches the job requirements. If I'm looking for a database engine expert and I get 999 resumes which all mention building websites in JS or machine learning models in Python, but one mentions experience on Linux kernel performance work (proven by accepted patches), which one do you think I'd choose?

smokey_circles 2021-08-16 14:04:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Tangential question:

I've used both Manjaro and Arch and Manjaro is far away my favorite distribution, because (to me at least) it's Arch for the lazy.

I ran Arch for years before Manjaro and so maybe that's the reason, but I don't believe Manjaro abstracts you away from nuts and bolts layer as much as Ubuntu does?

INB4 the ubuntu comment: I know, I know. You can still do a lot of fiddling under the hood, it's just not in a manner i'd describe as "the linux way". There are a lot of helper layers that break if you try to subvert them, but i will admit that update-alternatives is the only example coming to mind now

zozbot234 2021-08-16 14:20:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Debian is Arch for the lazy. It's also Arch for the professional who understands the pitfalls of the "rolling" release model.

arsome 2021-08-16 14:47:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yeah, I remember Arch breaking systems completely back when they moved the entire /bin and /lib, setting python3 as the default python, etc. Took hours of fucking around to fix.

I'm a tinkerer typically, but it seemed like they were going out of their way to break things and generate maintenance work for me, I've never had that issue with any other distro and I will never run Arch again because of it.

smokey_circles 2021-08-16 14:34:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm likely too young to fully appreciate that sentiment, but fair enough!

vlovich123 2021-08-16 14:31:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That's a bold claim considering Homebrew has been wildly successful on Mac & been doing the whole rolling release thing the entire time. Everything in the world is tradeoffs so I can also say "Arch is for the professional who understands the pitfalls of random OS distro updates/patches to upstream packages that don't get updated for years".

SkyMarshal 2021-08-16 14:17:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I recently spent some time evaluating a bunch of different systems for migrating away from Ubuntu, including several Arch-based ones.

I was the most impressed with Manjaro, it seems very well polished. From Gnome 40 on Wayland, to the the default ZFS shell with custom Powerline prompt, to the GUI desktop layout switcher which even includes the tiling PoP Shell as an option.

The Manjaro team has done an excellent job at assembling a configuration that is simultaneously power-user-focused but also user-friendly.

smokey_circles 2021-08-16 14:36:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Absolutely!

I just wish there'd be some more love on architect.

But maybe I need to learn more about the default installer, I couldn't get it to run on LVM and/or LUKS

SkyMarshal 2021-08-16 19:10:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The default installer offers an option to encrypt the disk, meaning LUKS + LVM. (iirc, LUKS requires LVM, but correct me if I'm wrong).

The only main shortcoming of the installer is, in 2021 it really needs to also offer btrfs as an option for automatic installation. Basically four options for automatic install: Ext4, btrfs, LUKS+Ext4, and LUKS+btrfs.

Having recently migrated to ZFS, and quickly become accustomed to the immense flexibility of datasets/subvolumes, snapshotting, and checksumming, I can't imagine using anything other than ZFS or btrfs now. And btrfs is standard on Fedora 34 and Garuda, probably some other distros too.

JanMa 2021-08-16 18:23:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I definitely agree with you. Manjaro is a great distro and I have used for multiple years. I especially liked that they offer such a broad range of supported desktop environments, each with their own downloadable ISO image.

If you are looking for something that's closer to pure Arch under the hood, your should give Endeavour OS [0] a try. It's basically vanilla Arch with a nicely configured XFCE desktop and a graphical installer.

[0]: https://endeavouros.com/

SkyMarshal 2021-08-16 19:11:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

>to the the default ZFS shell

Correction: ZSH shell.

dcminter 2021-08-16 17:33:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> [Ubuntu] You can still do a lot of fiddling under the hood, it's just not in a manner i'd describe as "the linux way".

I use and like Ubuntu, but I have to agree with this. Even before I finished reading this paragraph I was thinking of update-alternatives. Networking config springs to mind as well for me.

dmos62 2021-08-16 18:53:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If you want the Linux-way, nuts-and-bolts Slackware is where it's at. Slackware and Void Linux were my favorite distros. These days I'm just using Ubuntu for plug-and-play convenience.

follownotrend 2021-08-16 14:12:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

To OP - I think the resume is a clever format, and riding a language's popularity is a great way of putting yourself out there, especially as a junior.

To others, the "Traits" section -- how much impact does this really matter to the hiring managers? You're hired for what you know, but you're fired for who you are. Is it worth it to expand on these "traits", or is it a fluff area that can be replaced with something more meaningful?

onei 2021-08-16 14:38:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

For hiring software devs, I don't care about soft skills on a CV. If I'm concerned, I'll pull that thread in an interview. I'd much rather see those traits demonstrated rather than claim you have them and fall short of my expectations.

Recently, I've also seen people put progress bars for soft skills on a CV, as if they're close to mastering the skill or at least levelling up. It normally takes up a lot of space and is virtually meaningless.

exdsq 2021-08-16 17:03:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Was once hiring for a IT Support role and someone applied with a star-based system for their skills. I still to this day do not know what 4.5 Stars in "Cables" could ever possibly mean.

minxomat 2021-08-16 15:05:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

For soft skills, saying "can do X" isn't useful. The only written example that I'd even consider is you demonstrating X as part of a written sample (STAR answer), or BQ during an interview.

jaimie 2021-08-16 20:57:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I really like your header. As someone that makes hiring decisions, starting by showing your curiosity and reasoning as clearly as the Linux example, then immediately casting your mentorship and current position as an opportunity shows that you will be an engaged coworker that can push things to the next level. The resume itself showing that creative thinking.

It's not so much the way the content is presented, as much as the content itself!

dwenzek 2021-08-16 20:20:09 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm missing the integration tests ;-)

kosolam 2021-08-16 14:04:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Nice! Rust as first language. You must be something special. I suggest employers to check this guy out.

Communitivity 2021-08-16 14:32:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Going to drop a link to Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement diagram here [1].

I've upvoted you to give you the benefit of the doubt, because your comment could be taken as either positive, or negative. Based on the other comments in your profile I think you genuinely intended a positive meaning for your complement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_D...

kosolam 2021-08-18 10:04:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hey! Thanks! Indeed the comment is meant to be a compliment to this guy. I truly believe that if he managed the learning curve of Rust in addition with that being his first programming language, it means that he is quite strong and has potential to bring value to his future employer.

thrwyoilarticle 2021-08-16 13:50:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Opinion: LaTeX resumes/CVs don't make any sense.

If, in your job, you were trying to express technical information, you wouldn't use LaTeX. You might use it for a paper or a book where you have a lot of content or multiple issues that you want to look consistent. But a resume is a single, small document with multiple different sections that have different formatting requirements.

In your job, you probably share information in markdown or rst. If you're looking to signal - and let's be honest, with LaTeX you are - why not use those?

Bonus: ATS systems and recruiters won't bork your input.

paulgb 2021-08-16 13:58:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]

LaTeX has good typography. I'd rather look at a LaTeX resume with a decent template than an MS Word one. Plus, with LaTeX you can use version control. Markdown doesn't give you the level of control most people want in their resume layout.

Edit: also, I agree that Computer Modern can come off as signaling (although, in quant finance, I found it to be a useful and positive signal). But using other fonts it doesn't have the same connotations and just looks a bit more polished.

2021-08-16 14:27:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]

unquietcode 2021-08-16 13:56:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Counter-opinion: your resume will likely be viewed as a PDF or printed on a piece of paper and taken into an interview session, so all that really matters it how it looks on a standard size page for the region in which you're applying.

xyzzy_plugh 2021-08-16 13:59:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I find most resumes are slurped into a database, losing all formatting, then rendered real shitty on greenhouse or something. I send a PDF and plaintext, but I prefer just sending plaintext usually.

thrwyoilarticle 2021-08-16 15:49:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That's if it gets viewed at all. I have sat with an interviewer correcting all the information that their ATS misread. Apple's ATS did not properly ingest my PDF LaTeX CV.

wycy 2021-08-16 14:26:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Having my resume in LaTeX offers a nice perk I haven't seen mentioned in the replies yet: under each section you can put a ton of different bullet points all commented out, and simply uncomment the most relevant ones for each job you're applying to.

c618b9b695c4 2021-08-16 15:53:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I do the same. It is nice because I not only add a bullet point, but I can also keep in-line comments to remind me what the project was years down the road.

  %\item{Built internal dashboard for foo}
  % this was that awful project for <person> where they changed the requirements at the last second and yada yada...

tyingq 2021-08-16 13:54:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Assuming the LaTeX resume would be shared with a recruiter as a pdf, is there really any difference? I could render the markdown with the Computer Modern font and many people would assume LaTeX.

Sharlin 2021-08-16 14:07:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]

As an aside, in 2021 Computer Modern looks really dated, especially for content that’s predominantly text rather than math. There are much better, more Unicode-friendly, and more typographically complete LaTeX fonts available.

est31 2021-08-16 17:03:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Which fonts would you recommend?

Sharlin 2021-08-16 20:35:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Recently I've been using `mathpazo` which is Palatino extended with matching math symbols (if math is needed; if not, just use plain `palatino`).

Specifically, I use `mathpazo` with smallcaps and old-style figures enabled:

  \usepackage[sc,osf]{mathpazo}

Sharlin 2021-08-16 22:36:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]

(And yes, I realize that the original Palatino actually predates Computer Modern :D)

JustFinishedBSG 2021-08-16 14:02:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> I could render the markdown with the Computer Modern font

You really shouldn't though. Computer Modern is a pretty ugly font.

At least use something like New Computer Modern if you really need a Scoth Roman font with maths.

JustFinishedBSG 2021-08-16 14:00:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> If, in your job, you were trying to express technical information, you wouldn't use LaTeX.

I would, and do, use TeX. Hell I'd use LaTeX for everything if I could.

bradrn 2021-08-16 14:32:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Completely agreed. Except for the very very few cases where Word is better (e.g. printing out lots of pictures), I make a point of using LaTeX whenever possible. It’s just so much less painful than anything else.

thrwyoilarticle 2021-08-16 15:54:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This you?

https://github.com/bradrn/brassica/blob/master/README.md

bradrn 2021-08-17 03:07:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yes, that’s me. Why do you ask?

thrwyoilarticle 2021-08-17 10:09:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Doesn't look like LaTeX

bradrn 2021-08-17 10:45:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]

OK, perhaps I should have added a qualifier to my previous statement: when making offline documents, I use LaTeX whenever possible. Generally speaking, PDFs in a web browser aren’t particularly nice to read, so LaTeX doesn’t work so well with online documents. As for your specific example: if the entire project is already on GitHub, of course the sensible decision is to use Markdown, since that’s GitHub’s native format. (And if Markdown isn’t enough, then I’ll fall back to LaTeX: e.g. documentation for [0].) For non-web documents, however, I always use LaTeX in all but a small number of situations.

[0] https://github.com/bradrn/Conkey

thrwyoilarticle 2021-08-16 15:53:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You're in the minority. I haven't seen any LaTeX readmes on github.

bobbylarrybobby 2021-08-16 14:02:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Does anybody really care what you use to generate your resume? LaTeX produces nice looking PDF output, is semantic (\cvitem{...}) and is modularized (if you're using OpenCV, you can change the layout with one line).

OJFord 2021-08-16 16:14:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

There's a LaTeX curriculum vitae template called 'OpenCV'? That's brilliant.

I use LaTeX for mine, not because of some misguided sense of street cred, but just because I want it version controlled. I'm sure there are some nice pandoc templates for styling markdown CVs, but AwesomeCV for LaTeX CVs was what I came across, and has worked fine (roughly, it's abandonware that I've tweaked/fixed a bit but nobody's PRs get merged) since. My CV doesn't say 'proudly generated with heart emojis in LaTeX', or anything like that, it's just the tool I happened to use.

Communitivity 2021-08-16 14:37:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I've been meaning to use OpenCV, as I need to sharpen up my resume again (every 3 years). Do you have any resources you would recommend?

I've used OverLeaf [1] and a tweaked Shawn Pan's 'Resume for a Software Engineer' template [2] in the past.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com/

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/resume-template-for-...

bobbylarrybobby 2021-08-16 16:17:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Edit: whoops, it's moderncv, not openvc.

exdsq 2021-08-16 17:05:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Ha! I was about to ask if you meant you could changing your CV around with computer vision

Edit: Wait... OpenVC? ;)

pow_pp_-1_v 2021-08-16 14:04:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I am building a LaTex resume. Why? Because I hate working on my resume and doing it with markup and other stuff makes it a bit more... bearable?

Yeah, I know, I am weird.

globular-toast 2021-08-16 14:59:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> If, in your job, you were trying to express technical information, you wouldn't use LaTeX.

If it was for print then yes, I would. But a CV isn't technical information so I'm not sure what your point is here.

Have you considered that LaTeX might be the only typesetting tool I know? Why would I learn another piece of software just to typeset my CV?

thrwyoilarticle 2021-08-16 15:48:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Well I think a CV is technical information and I do know more than one typesetting tool.

actually_a_dog 2021-08-16 14:17:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You can skip doing all that formatting work yourself by using a good template. If you choose a 1-column layout, ATS probably won't bork it any more than any other PDF, too.

Here are a bunch of templates that range from decent-looking to beautiful: https://www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/cv

Communitivity 2021-08-16 14:25:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I agree on your main point, in a weaker wording: 'LaTeX resumes/CVs rarely make sense', but not for the reason you gave, and I disagree with not using LaTeX in general for technical information.

The reason I think LaTeX resumes/CVs rarely make sense is that there are a number of HR departments that require them in MS Word format (often this is a SharePoint house and yes, I think that bizarre, but that is what I've found). LaTeX can be converted to Word doc, but in my experience always requires tweaking.

For sharing technical work, I think it depends on your audience.

A connected team with a decent wiki or document generation pipline authoring informal technical how-tos or status intended for the team only? Then some flavor of markdown (I prefer Creole) can make perfect sense.

Authoring anything for team external use should use a well defined community standard (rustdoc, rst, etc.) if what's being documented is specific to that community (Rust code, Python code, etc.).

Authoring anything of a more technical nature (papers, how-tos to be delivered to a client, CONOPS) should be authored in a pipeline that starts with a text based format, so that you can put it under good version control (opinionated, but SharePoint/Word do not count for that for me). I prefer LaTeX for that format. Some prefer Docbook, some DITA, and I've even seen a TOML version. This gets you version control, document section re-use, and fine-grained control over document layout.

Note I said should.

Some potential barriers to that are:

* Skillsets - the rest of the team does not know Docbook, DITA, or LaTeX and may be resistant to learn. This will make it a hard sell to management.

* Time - The project does not have the budget or scope to change how documentation is being done, according to management. In reality, this pipeline will save time in editing, and improve quality delivered to the client or end customer.

* NIH/NIMBY - Not Invented Here and it's more obstinate brother, Not In My Backyard. If your shop has always done it a certain way, then the team may be resistant to changing. Especially if the way it has been done is reflective of a Windows world (MS Word, MS PowerPoint). If management is part of this problem, move. Only partially kidding, but a good document pipeline will be a hard sell.

What do you do if you cannot sell a good document pipeline?

You could version control your MS Word documents in Git through conversion[1], but this means you might lose some of the little tweaks your manager did to improve quality/put their stamp on the doc.

Another option is that MS Word has track changes, and you may be stuck with a combination of track changes and SharePoint/Confluence versioning.

Another option, which I've never tried, is to unzip the MS .docx file into a folder (each .docx file is a zip of a bunch of files, most them text), git version control that folder, and re-zip it up when needed. Not sure how well git diffs will work in this situation though. My guess it probably not well, but maybe better than nothing.

[1] https://blog.front-matter.io/mfenner/using-microsoft-word-wi...