this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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me_irl
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So many times in my early career, recruiters specified that my resume had to be in .doc rather than .pdf. One of them even said that it was so they could remove any identifying factors before sending it to their clients.
I wish I'd been canny enough to recognize that as a red flag.
edit: I've since written a script to generate a pdf resume from a yaml file. Good luck with that, recruiters!
I just use LaTeX.
Nothing wrong with that!
3rd party recruiters do this to try and lure clients (organizations that are hiring) in. They also do it to pretend you already work at the consulting firm (if the recruiter is for the consulting firm) and other shady stuff.
You are probably better off not working with someone who is editing your resume.
Higher quality 3rd party recruiters don’t do this stuff.
It’s bests to stick with pdfs
Oh, I know.
Now.
But how do I render my LaTeX to a word document?
Not sure whether this actually works, but I'd probably try pandoc first.
Print out the LaTeX
Scan the printed file back in and save as a PDF
Export the PDF to a .png
Import the .png to Word
?????
Profit
You joke, but people do that.
I've received, more than once, a screenshot embedded in an Excel file...
that script sounds hot..
I had it stored on a git VM I've long since deleted, but it wasn't complex. If you're genuinely interested, I would be happy to collaborate with you.