I've been using LaTeX for mine for years and never looked back. I have it setup in such a way that I just comment or uncomment a few lins at the start and can easily include or exclude, or adjust, types of skills, work experience, length, etc.
Always produces a nice, easy to clean minimal pdf that has some protections against recruiters trying to copy and paste and change things.
Mine is also in LaTeX. Every 3-5 years I get a nice reminder of the nightmare that is cobbling together a fully functional LaTeX dev environment to work on it again.
The issue for me with LaTeX is the amount of time I spend messing around trying to get different packages to play nicely together.
Sometimes you get lucky and everything just works. If it doesn't... you google it, and pray that someone else hit the same problem and solved it, because trying to actually figure out the problem from first principles is doomed -- the language (and ecosystem) makes Perl look sane.
I agree, but it can be useful to produce html and plain text versions of your resume and cover letter too. Per-job customization, and adding custom metadata for cover letters, is also useful.
What worked for me was I creating a simple python script that uses json files with custom data as input, and uses mako templates to create latex, html, and text output.
I've never needed an html version honestly. I do have it setup to produce a text version for copying and pasting into job applications that don't support file upload. Or worse, that want you to paste the same information and then upload your resume anyway.
Hi, I have a latex resume/cv too and am curious about "some protections against recruiters trying to copy and paste and change things". What does that mean?
Honestly I don't recall exactly because it's been so long since I set it up. I think I did something to make it hard to export/convert to doc/docx, and maybe even prevent or make it hard to copy test for certain blocks. It was just using some tracks for things you can do with the pdf format, but I don't have more information at the moment.
I'll try and dig in later and see what I actually did.
Unpopular opinion: every time I see anything made with LaTeX, it makes my eyes bleed. While it might be great for editing, I find it to be a pain to read. I really wish academic papers (and everything else it is used for) would be written with a tool that generate at least a bit more readable output...
TeX output was optimized for printing, so it looks better on paper than on screen. (IMHO, it looks excellent on paper). Try to zoom in, for better experience, or view generated PDF on eInk display.
I think it's mostly the font itself that hurts me. It curls at all the bad places, and somehow I find most characters disproportional; just like the word spacing, which is pretty much random when you switch between styles (italics to maths formula to normal - spacing is all over the place).
The font itself reminds me of the ugly skinny latin fonts you see on Chinese programs, especially when set in italics.
I see that everyone loves LaTeX with virtually no exception - have no idea if it's an acquired taste that everyone gets, or it's my defect for being unable to find any inherent value in it as a reader. In any case, I just don't get it, lol.
Always produces a nice, easy to clean minimal pdf that has some protections against recruiters trying to copy and paste and change things.