LaTeX Resume

Currently have been reworking my resume since watching this great video by Trisha Gee.

####First Attempt My first attempt at rewriting my Resume I decided to write it in Markdown, and convert it to a nicely formatted PDF using Pandoc. Pandoc is an amazing tool that I use often to convert quick markdown, to nicely formatted Word Documents (.doc) or to PDF.

Reading Pandoc's Readme "To produce a PDF, simply specify an output file with a .pdf extension. Pandoc will create a latex file and use pdflatex (or another engine, see --latex-engine) to convert it to PDF." So Pandoc converts Markdown -> LaTeX -> PDF, sounds great to me let's try it.

Reading down farther "Production of a PDF requires that a LaTeX engine be installed", so I went ahead and installed MacTeX to correctly compile the Markdown to PDF.

Once I had everything installed the command with Pandoc is really simple

pandoc resume.md -o AndrewGableResume.pdf

The problem first I ran into was it I didn't have much control of the document margins. Quick Google search took care of that with this command

pandoc -V geometry:margin=1in resume.md -o AndrewGableResume.pdf

The second problem I ran into was the page number placed at the bottom of the page, some research landed me to realize that I could start to write LaTeX code in my markdown. The command to remove the page numbers I found to work was

\pagenumbering{gobble}

So then I had started to write LaTeX code, and had the LaTeX package all installed and I asked myself why not just write it in LaTeX?

####Second Attempt Once I had decided that I was going to do my Resume in LaTeX using the MacTeX package package I was was dead set on making a sweet resume using LaTeX. I had done some Google searches on "LaTeX Resume Guides" or "LaTeX Resume templates".

Then I found a great resource - LaTeX Resume Templates. It has multiple template designs and all the source files for LaTeX! A perfect start to my resume.

I then needed to learn how to use LaTeX, and I found a great LaTeX Tutorial. This helped me though the baby steps of LaTeX. I was then compiling my own LaTeX to pdf using the command

pdflatex AndrewGableResume.tex

I was getting places, and making my resume look great. Then I ran into a snag, I wanted to work on my Resume at school. The computers in the lab didn't have LaTeX installed, so I needed to find something new.

###Third Attempt I finally found the tool that I wanted, ShareLaTeX. I could work at home, work and school all from the same website. It compiles and I can download the PDF directly from the website.

The final piece to my perfect resume using LaTeX was getting someone to give me feedback on it. I would ask friends but they really wouldn't tear it up. They would say this is good this is bad, but not offer real feedback.

Through some Google research I found the subreddit r/resumes. It was amazing, people posting their resumes for criticism and getting it! I posted my resume and got each part critiqued and analyzed until I had it perfect.

Overall, it was a great experience learning LaTeX and the technologies that people have created for it. I would highly recommend anyone interested in rewriting or redesigning their resume to check out the possibilities of LaTeX.