Write Your CV in LaTeX!

Today I’m going to convince you to write your CV or resume in . If you are not familiar with LaTeX, this is a great way to dig into learning it!

Open up your favorite TeX editor. I use TeXnicCenter (Windows), TeXworks (Mac/Windows/Linux), and Kile (Linux), but there’s lots of them out there. What I like is syntax coloring and line wrapping, but you can do this using a plain text editor and terminal commands.

Copy this simple .tex document:

\documentclass[letterpaper, 12pt]{article}

\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage[hyphens]{url}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\section*{Name}
Contact information

\section*{Education}
List credentials here: degree, institution, date,
 thesis/dissertation, academic awards, etc.

\section*{Employment}
List job title, location, dates.
 For a resume, add job-related accomplishments/responsibilities.

\section*{Publications}
List publications (newest on top).
To add a url, use \href{url}{url or display name}.

...add more sections here...

\end{document}

Some quick tips for formatting:

• Use \\ to make a line break in a paragraph and \hspace*{.25in} to force an indent.
• If you want to indent all lines after the first line of the paragraph, use the \hangindent=.25in command at the beginning of said paragraph.
• Use \textbf{text here} or \textit{text here} to bold or italicize your encapsulated text for some variety.
• The hyperref package makes it really easy to control the way your links display.
• Add the fancyhdr package to include your name and page numbers in a footer (especially useful for long CVs).
• Add the titlesec package to control the section display.
• If you use BibTeX and have a .bib file of your publications, you can easily fit that in. Replace the \section*{Publications} with this:

\renewcommand\refname{Publications} %changes default name to Publications
\nocite{*} %lists everything in the .bib file
\bibliographystyle{plain} %hundreds of styles to choose from
\bibliography{samplebib} %name of your .bib file

Now compile your file using pdfLaTeX and voila! You’ve got yourself a working .tex file for a CV or resume. For fun, here’s a current rendition of my CV. Feel free to ask me for any specifics!