Introducing PPResume, a LaTeX-Based Resume Builder

Xiao Hanyu,•ResumeLaTeXTypesetting
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Table of Contents

Introduction

Welcome to PPResume, a LaTeX-based resume builder that helps people create beautifully typed resumes in minutes.

Motivation

Years ago, my friends asked me to help them with their resumes, since I am good with typesetting, especially LaTeX, I was happy to help. I have helped about a dozen people typeset their resumes in LaTeX, and most of them are quite satisfied with the high-quality, beautifully typed resumes.

To my surprise, some of them still come back to me after several years and ask me to help them update their resumes again when they are looking for a new opportunity.

In 2016, I opened an e-commerce shop to sell service for typesetting resumes in LaTeX. I got a few customers, made some money, and realized that if you could offer people high-quality, beautifully typed resumes, there could be a market for it.

However, I did not have enough time to create a service for this idea until I was laid off in November 2022. Since I have mastered all the necessary skills to make this idea a reality, I decided to put it into action.

The motivation behind this project is to create a resume builder that can help people create beautifully typed resumes in minutes.

Market Research

Here comes the first question: there are tons of resume builders on the market, why another one?

List of commercial resume builders on the market:

List of some free, open source resume builders as well:

Most resume builders on the market put a heavy bet on UI/UX, however, their PDF output is not very good — if not quite bad — because they create PDFs using the browser’s print function, essentially taking screenshots of some HTML nodes. I am not saying that you can not create beautifully typed resume PDFs with HTML/CSS, but it’s not easy. In a word, a well-designed UI/UX is important, but what is delivered to the recruiter is the resume PDF, not the UI/UX of the resume builders.

Typesetting

In fact, when it comes to typesetting documents, you have several options:

All these options have their advantages and disadvantages.

Microsoft Word may be the most popular word processing software that is often used to create documents such as letters, reports, and resumes. It is very easy to use, making it accessible to most people. However, it has limited design capabilities and is not good at creating complex layouts.

Adobe InDesign, on the other hand, is a professional desktop publishing software designed specifically for creating print and digital publications such as magazines, brochures, and eBooks. It offers more advanced design features and layout tools than Microsoft Word. However, the learning curve is so steep that most people have no idea how to use it.

HTML/CSS is widely used and supported by all modern browsers on all platforms, so you do not need to install anything to view HTML documents. However, if you want to create HTML documents, you need some kind of coding — wait, I just want to create a resume and you are asking me to learn coding? Are you kidding me?

LaTeX is a professional typesetting software that allows you to create documents and produce extremely high-quality, beautifully typed PDFs. It is widely used in academia and research, especially in mathematics, engineering, and computer science. However, it has a very steep learning curve and is very difficult for beginners to learn and use. In a word, it makes little sense to learn LaTeX just to create a resume.

Here are two example resumes. The first was created with RXResume, which uses HTML/CSS to create PDFs, while the second was created with PPResume, which uses LaTeX instead. Feel the difference yourself and see which version is more balanced, elegant and beautiful in terms of typesetting.

Example Resume by RXResume Example Resume by PPResume

If you have a keen eye and prefer beautifully typed resumes with extremely high quality PDF output, then I would recommend LaTeX. However, as mentioned earlier, LaTeX is notorious for its steep learning curve, it is quite difficult to get started. Looking for a LaTeX-based resume builder instead? Too bad, there are very few LaTeX-based resume builders on the market.

LaTeX-Based Resume Builder

As far as I know, before PPResume, ResumePuppy is the only commercial resume builder on the market that uses LaTeX as its typesetting engine. However, it provides only 5 sections for resumes, such as “Personal Info”, “Experience”, “Projects”, “Education”, and “Skills”, which may not be enough in many cases, while PPResume provides at least 14 types of sections that could cover most cases.

resumake.io is an open source resume builder that uses LaTeX as its typesetting engine as well. However, although resumake.io was started in early 2017, it does not appear to have been actively developed for some time, and the product is far from finished in my opinion.

Therefore, if you are looking for a resume builder that output top-notch PDF with exceptional quality, you have very limited choices as of now.

First Principles

Let us go back to first principles in writing a resume. A resume is a piece of paper that shows information about you, your education, work experience, skills, etc. The goal of a resume is to help you get an offer from an organization (be it a company, a school, a research institute, etc.)

Writing a resume is a very lengthy and tedious process. It usually takes several hours to write a resume and days to make it as perfect as possible. It takes so long because the resume plays a big role when you are looking for a new opportunity. A carefully crafted, beautifully typed resume can help you stand out from the crowd and get an offer. Many people revise their resume letter by letter, word by word, line by line to make sure it does not contain any mistakes, just to pass the baseline. If you want your resume to stand out, a clean, elegant, and beautiful typesetting would be a big plus.

The process of writing a resume can be divided into three steps, and each step requires different assistance:

  1. content
  1. typesetting
  1. delivery

PPResume will focus on typesetting first, and we will gradually add support for content and delivery in a progressive manner.

Past, Present and Future

In December 2022, I wrote the first line of code for PPResume. Here’s what it looks like at the end of the second week, a dashboard with a form on the left and a resume preview container on the right:

PPResume POC

This is what it looks like after 8 months of hard work (as of November 2023), still a dashboard with a form on the left and a resume preview container on the right, but this time the dashboard is much more powerful.

PPResume Launch

The Powerful Dashboard

As mentioned above, PPResume provides an intuitive and powerful dashboard that can guide you through the tedious process of writing resumes.

Real-Time Input Validation

PPResume has real-time input validation that helps avoid common, simple low-level mistakes. All form fields are validated as you type.

Rich Set of Input Controls

Filling out long forms is tedious but not that hard in PPResume. PPResume offers a variety of input controls, such as Select to choose an option, Month Picker to enter start and end dates, Multi Select to enter keywords or courses, and Rich Text Editor to enter many text. You can enter a variety of information with peace.

Structural Editing

PPResume also provides you with powerful and intuitive structural editing to refine your resume, allowing you to duplicate, delete and rearrange items with ease.

Customizable Layout

Last but not least, PPResume gives you options to customize the layout, such as font size and margins.

Look Ahead

Once we have a solid foundation for top tier typesetting with high quality PDF output, we will put more effort on content and delivery.

For example, we could integrate grammarly to help users improve syntax and grammar. We could also integrate AIGC tools to generate content based on user’s prompt to give users more inspiration.

Stay tuned and give PPResume a try for free!