Show HN: Resume maker with no sign-up or subscription (opens in new tab)

> Photos on resumes are never a good idea

Except when they are the standard in a culture other than yours. A CV without a picture in France is a bit suspect and it will leave the feeling of something incomplete.

When you search for "photo cv" in French, you will see a lot of sites that start with claiming that the photo is not compulsory, cannot be required and that the lack of a photo cannot be a reason not to assess your CV. Just this shows that the reality is that it is expected.

A lot of discussions is around discrimination. If your name sounds [put your most feared origin here], you can hide the picture as much as possible but this will not make a 12th generation Brittany-ion (no idea how someone from the Brittany region is called).

Then there is the address which also reveals a lot and at the end of the day the fact that you did not put a picture is likely to be against you.

This is very dependent on the country / culture.

In Germany, for example, a resume without a photo will most likely not even get considered.

Depends very much on the country. With a photo, in some, your resume will immediately thrown out to avoid any repercussions for a possible bias that did not lead to hiring. In others, without a photo, your resume will not be read.

To play Devil's advocate, are they really never a good idea? I agree with your logic about bias but bias can cut both ways. If someone's look tends to help them get hired why wouldn't they play that card?

I don't have a photo on my resume and have never seen one used in the US, but my LinkedIn photo (which I assume everyone involved in hiring sees) is carefully chosen to represent the mix of attributes (friendlynes, confidence, curiosity, and many others) that I think are relevant for roles I go after. Surely my photo also 'reveals' my enthinicy and gender - but my name does too.

On LinkedIn photos really should be removed as well, you're correct about bias. I don't put a photo on LinkedIn, and I don't think anyone should. You do not need to know anything about my physical appearance when I'm applying for jobs. This is in sharp contrast to certain countries where you're supposed to take the most attractive photo you can to send it with your resume. I swear to God some of these resumes look more like personal ads.

LinkedIn is still my go-to resource for job hunting, but I want to vomit a bit when I see people trying to turn it into Facebook. Get your validation somewhere else, and let me have a website where I can look for a job.

This is childish. You could say the same thing about putting your name or even the company names you worked for on your resume. People hiring want to get to know you, they have to work with you, if you want some pretend construct that focuses in the appearance of some being "unbiased" you can probably look for a government job. Otherwise, people will see you, interact with you, and learn about you eventually.

That said, I have rarely seen a photo on a resume. Most people have LinkedIn now so hiring folks have a photo that way regardless. The only place I consistently see photos is on professional services (consulting etc.) "resumes" which are usually more a blurb about you and the kind of projects you've worked on. In that case they are standard, and they would be on a lawyer or accountants website.

This is true. In fact many larger companies will automatically delete any resume with a photo, regardless of your fit for the role.

This is because they'd like to avoid any liability for any kind of bias, so they make it an across-the-board policy.

Source: I'm a recruiter and have worked with over 400 companies, of which about 20 have this policy.

They are an advantage if you think your physical appearance will be an advantage.

If you are the same 'colour' as the place your applying to (i.e. if that's relevant) it might help.

If you are physically attractive (but not too attractive) - it can help.

Basically - it allows a kind of discrimination which usually we don't want ... unless you think you're going to be on the positive end of that!

And I beg to disagree with 'memorable' - we are designed to remember faces - not resumes.

While maybe not so 'impressionable' - a nice photo definitely helps the memory.

It also adds a human connection.

For technical roles, it might not make much of a difference but for almost all non-technical roles, it will probably help if you have a 'charismatic face'.

I am very pretty.

I remember one time some person included a photo on their resume and it was passed around the office with everyone laughing. The photo wasn't even bad. It was just funny to have a photo on the resume.

If you are good looking, they are a very good idea.

If you old and look younger than you are, they are an even better idea since they distract from your age.

I do think that photos on resumes vary in some countries. Some countries prefer photos, but others don't. But I agree with you that they don't print well and don't look good.

You must be American. All over SEA they are pretty normal.

I think it depends a lot on the industry as well. In some industries it is common to paste photos, in others it will look very strange

It really depends. If you're attractive and certain beneficial information can be gleaned from your resume (e.g. things that recruiters are measured on come performance review time), I can certainly see it helping.

As someone who has applied for a lot of jobs in the past year and loves TeX, it's a bad idea for applicants. Greenhouse consistently pulls data incorrectly from resumes made in TeX and this puts you at a huge disadvantage within a pool of applicants. My response rate went up massively as soon as I abandoned my well-crafted TeX resume and went to a bare-bones resume made in Apple Pages.

This validates my LaTeX usage, but honestly, can’t you only detect it if I’m using Computer Modern? I am, precisely because of people like you, but I don’t think you could tell a XeTeX-built resume with a Unicode font from one done in Word. And conversely a Word user could simply download CM Unicode and reap the LaTeX bonus points, no? :)

Sometimes not even an commonly talked about bias like race or gender. It can be as simple as "this person looks annoying".

Isn't it even illegal to have pictures in some countries, precisely to avoid such biases?

> it causes me to have unavoidable bias.

Admitting you're susceptible to bias is one thing (we all are, I think). Calling it unavoidable makes it seem like something innate and implies you lack free will. I'm curious why you see it as unavoidable.

I religiously keep mine to 1 page, and even shorter if possible. Imagine your potential interviewer. He or she is booked in back-to-back meetings all day. Has not a lot of time to prepare. In the 2 minutes between his last meeting and your interview, he scrambles to print off a copy of your resume and give it a quick review. His eyeballs scan the top of the page for interesting "headline" material, and then maybe look at the first two or three bullet points from your most recent employer. That might be it! All that labor you put into that detailed technical info on page 4 might not even make it out of the printer, let alone get into your interviewer's head. The only person who is likely to read all four pages is your hiring manager, and if by page 3 it's just a bunch of technologies you used in a now-defunct company back in 1996, it's not going to impress anyone.

Additionally, the ability to summarize a highly technical and detailed topic down to a very short "executive review" is an important and sought-after job skill. Keep it short and include only the best results of your work.

Your post got a variety of responses. My take as someone who did hiring (as a manager) for a high profile tech company for 10+ years (not a FAANG but we competed with FAANGs for talent.) I've probably seen close to ten thousand programmer resumes over that time.

My big advice is not to take resume length guidelines literally. Crafting a resume requires balancing terseness and completeness. Terseness out respect for the reader, completeness to ensure your candidacy is well represented.

It is an art to capture your essence concisely. Someone in the thread said they only list the company and the tools they use, which to me is a huge mistake. If you just say something like "Developed in Node, React, CSS" you give the reader no idea of your actual contribution. It could mean "made tweaks to existing system based on explicit direction from a product person" or it could mean "Drove re-design of the system in these technologies, achieving X improvement in performance, Y improvement in maintenance cost. Partnered with business SMEs to develop requirements, and ensured high technical standards on the team." The second is a much more senior/desirable candidate and if you are that but don't capture these ideas in your resume, you won't stand out.

On the other hand I have seen resumes where each job has a half-a-page narrative description. Almost universally, these descriptions are actually filled with job/company specific terms that are totally meaningless to anyone outside of that company. I am strongly biased to not hire anyone with such a resume because it's a sign that the person's communication ability/relevance filter is low.

Anyway, as a practical guide, I do advise people to shoot for a terse 1 or max 2 page resume, BUT if you find yourself cutting out really important points to fit the space, then don't do that.

I may not be representative, but I tend to keep it to a page or maybe two. You can fit a lot of info into a page and the 3+ page resumes I've seen have been way too dense. For me it's not an exhaustive list of work history and tasks, but things applicable to the new role. Ideally, I'd restate the job requirements (which is, what, usually a paragraph or 4-5 bullet points?) using my work history.

I often find the just degree too vague and job titles aren't representative. So if you filled the page with that info I find that isn't helpful, either.

this makes contrast with every other opinion I've ever heard about keeping the CV short and clean

I’ve always kept it short. I try to summarize things I’ve done to a high level (the impact and what tools I used). If a bullet point stands out to an interviewer they can ask more during.

To be clear, "not a diversity hire" above is not intended to be a positive attribute.

Are you from Europe perhaps? Or do the skillsets in your field stay relevant longer?

If you ever wanted to chat more about how you built and deploy your app I'd love to have you on my podcast at https://runninginproduction.com/.

There's 0 Haskell episodes so far, you'd be the first one!

Nice tool. If possible add a collection of random data to generate a random resume so that people can see a real resume before filling out their actual personal data.

Do you have any plans to open source this? I love the function and have always wished something like this exists. I have my own dumb opinions on resumes like format and multiple pages, so I'd like to be able to tweak the design a bit.

This is neat! What was your experience like using this stack? Were any of these first-time or learning-oriented (rather than comfort) choices?

There’s a paid download option which has no watermark at the bottom of the resume.

I had the exact same thought. Decided not to fill in with any PII for that reason.

Here's another alternative which I built. The exported pdf is text based and thus optimized for resume scanning softwares used by companies.

https://resumetopdf.com/

It is optional, if you start filling out the form it will go away until you add a photo. That’s not very clear though, so I’ll make it more obvious. Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks for the feedback. I think that’s a good point. One reason I have collapsible work/education is being able to reorder them.

I’ve updated to generate PDFs using embedded/vector text, so it supports copying, pasting, and parsing.

Yeah good point. I hope to change the text to vector/embedded font in the future.

Do you mean generate it based on a LinkedIn profile? That’s something I may add in the future. I don’t use LinkedIn, I thought they already have a resume generator, is that true?

Good points. Thanks for the feedback.

Just PDF for now. I hope to offer Word format in the future.

It’s just a resume maker. Good to know that’s confusing, I’ll think about making the language more clear.

In the future I might add multiple designs/templates.

I don’t think so. Do you have trouble accessing it? The whole thing is cached with CloudFlare.