Your first mistake was google docs. The second was not making it into a PDF or other locked print ready file format.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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me_irl
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Do you have a moment to talk about LaTeX?
As a recent LaTeX convert, I'm never going back.
PRINT TO PDF STUPID MOTHERFUCKER
Write it in VSCode with html & css, open in browser, print to file
We do this exact thing but with vim. Bonus: we can use CSS instead of dealing with Libreoffice paragraph styles, and we can get fancy with the design in ways that'd probably be awkward in LO!
Thats why ISO 26300 is superior to all those propriatery formats.
ODF (Open Document Format) for those who don't want to search up "ISO 26300"
Never seen that as an allowable file format.
Because no one can make money selling editors for it.
I'd go straight with Markdown, but I know it would confuse some non-technical folks, so I usually still go with Markdown, but pass it through something that outputs PDF.
Once you know how to use markdown, it's so much faster than any kind of gui imo.
If you provide your CV as an editable word editor document instead of a PDF then there's no way you're making it to the interview round if I'm the AI assigned to screen your application.
...you think PDF files can't be edited? 🤓
Internally, PDF is such a shit format that it is more likely to cause your computer to go thermonuclear and destroy your entire neighborhood than it is to survive even the most minor edit. And that's even if you choose to pay Adobe for their craptastic editor.
It's not intended to be an editable format. Any hacky solution that allows editing it is always going to be shit.
And spreadsheets aren't supposed to be anything more than a convenient way to calculate things, but we know how that went.
I hear the message.
Next time I refrain from making tongue-in-cheek comments or try different emojis 🫡
There was no message, I just recently had to do a deep dive into our PDF code to fix something that is ridiculous and took way too long to work around (it wasn't a bug as much as it was PDF nonsense), so I am severely butthurt about PDF right now and venting about it whenever I get the chance.
I'm sorry if my light-footed comment has caused distress by reminding you of your deep dive into your PDF code 🙏
I don't care if it's edited, it's the presentation.
PDF can be an image format. If they want to draw on top of that, they can do that with any format.
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!
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?
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Print out the LaTeX
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Scan the printed file back in and save as a PDF
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Export the PDF to a .png
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Import the .png to Word
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?????
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Profit
You joke, but people do that.
I've received, more than once, a screenshot embedded in an Excel file...
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This is my first step of weeding out candidates. The software we used would render the PDF for a first pass, but if it had a .doc, then you'd have to download it, and open it on your machine. I tried to convince the HR department to disable .doc uploads for security risks but I guess it was a global setting and would have applied to sales hires too.
Also I'm not paying for Microsoft Windows 11 Copilot AI O365, or whatever it's currently called, just so I can send a CV.
In Germany we ask back: Can you explain the gap in your company's history between 1933 and 1945?
Can you explain the gap between 1970-01-01 and 2013-05-06?
CMOS battery died.
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Ok, now I am extremely concerned what you were doing during your gap.
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Published. Document. Format.
I thought it was Perverted Document Format.
I think I heard ol' Don say he invented it and it's called the presidential document format
The P stands for Portable
Also, and a lot of people get this wrong, but the P is silent
Only when sitting, not standing.
Doh, you're right. My bad.
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Also: I painstakingly put all this information into LinkedIn, where you also posted the job req and your HR recruiter made contact. Please kindly fuck all the way off with making me re-enter all this data into your crummy HR database.
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