Looks nice! I do, however, see an issue with such tools, as they require people to maintain their CV. I don't want to hijack the thread so I won't link here unless asked to do so, but I've build something to keep developers' profiles up to date
I really love tools that treat documents as code. I have been trying to move my workflows away from binary formats (like PPT & Word) to text based ones I can more easily version control.
Does this support custom CSS for the layout or is it bound to the YAML templates?
It’s completely flexible. However, it's not done through CSS. We use Typst to generate PDFs, and we template Typst files using Jinja2 from YAML. You can override the built-in Typst templates; see the guide here: https://docs.rendercv.com/user_guide/how_to/override_default...
Why invent a new file format when there is https://jsonresume.org/? Its also quite easy to customize and add more things as it does not prohibit extra values
The JSON Resume schema did not support what we needed, so we deliberately created our own.
We wanted to define 9 different entry schemas that could be used under any section title. In our schema, each section, regardless of its title, contains a list composed of one of these nine entry types. This is different from the JSON Resume approach, where specific entry schemas are tied to specific sections (work schema for work section, etc.).
In RenderCV, users can choose any section title they want and use any of the 9 entry types within it. Each entry type is rendered differently in the generated PDF.
I have been through a huge over supply of AI generated CVs using similar tools this year. I am sure this will help people so not bashing the tool per se, but bare in mind that you will be joining the robots.
I don't know what the solution really is, but as much as I hate it, a verified Linkedin Profile is a huge signal now. Otherwise a real personal site with care and history. I am guilty of being bad with the second so - no easy answers. Maybe even a wacky looking CV would make me notice a candidate more. Powerpoint 90s style.
We deliberately chose not to use JSON Resume because we wanted greater flexibility. For example, in RenderCV, you can use any section title you want and place any of the 9 available entry types under any section. In contrast, JSON Resume has predefined section titles, and each section is restricted to a predefined entry type. For instance, you must use the experience entry schema under the experience section.
I hear you. This boils town to personal opinion. I would have preferred to use an existing standard than introducing yet another one. The custom sections aren't something I've ever seen or needed anyway.
I’d love to know if this performs better than your average resume in OCR or scanning tools. I think if you could advertise that you follow some kind of arcane best practices, that would be super attractive to a lot of people.
I have a lot of anxiety about missing opportunities because of shitty OCR.
Thank you. We will add an analysis of how RenderCV PDFs perform with applicant tracking systems in docs at some point, but users have been reporting positive results. We generate the PDFs using Typst, which adheres to modern PDF standards.
I used this recently for my resume and I recommend it.
I have the technical background to write Latex and Typst documents but I honestly didn't want the headache. Plus I'm the type to futz with styling all day long instead of putting down actual content. RenderCV was simple to use and did exactly what I wanted.
This looks really interesting, but I’m wondering what this adds that someone can’t already do with Typst+a resume template. The basic-resume template already abstracts enough that you only need to care about content rather than formatting:
Here are a couple of reasons, just a few that come to mind, why using YAML + RenderCV can be more appealing than working directly in Typst:
- Reusing the same content across multiple themes. YAML + RenderCV allows you to experiment with different themes and design options to the exact same content with no changes to the data itself. This is difficult to achieve in pure Typst, where switching templates typically means adapting your content to a different set of Typst commands.
- Centralized control over entry layouts. You can adjust how entire classes of entries are rendered from a single place—for example, changing the layout of all education entries at once, rather than editing each entry individually.
Wish I had seen this before making my resume in latex. One question, though to add publications, is it possible to use bibtex, or do you have to manually convert each publication to YAML?
Yes, unfortunately, you will need to convert them to YAML. I think an LLM can easily do that for you, though. This has been requested before, but we haven’t implemented it in order to keep our schema robust and simple. Maybe we should add it.
This is clearly a real project that was built over several years with human effort (not vibe coded). Which makes it all the more depressing that the author decided to take a massive dump over the entire README.md with AI slop.
I get the motivation, but it honestly feels a bit weird to use tens of thousands of lines of python code to do something that you can just directly do in typst.
I mean, a CV is not really rocket science and there are quite a few great typst templates out there.
Point taken, but I'd prefer 200 lines of rocket science that I understand and control over 60k lines of (cleanly written and documented) rocket science.
(Although admittedly both plain typst and this project are still way less complex than LaTeX.)
In tough job markets, submitting 100 résumés before getting hired is not uncommon. Of possible interest is my Creating Catchy Cover Letters blog post, which uses my Markdown editor, KeenWrite (https://keenwrite.com), to create PDF files styled to match a company's branding:
A handful of prospective managers told me that my cover letter stood out among hundreds of applicants.
Here's the full shell script I used to build cover letters (you'll need to point "theme dir" to the directory where the cover letter theme---aspiros---is found). With this script, creating a cover letter went from about 20 minutes down to 5. If you have any troubles getting it to work, contact me via https://whitemagicsoftware.com/.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# This script builds a cover letter based on a company's branding. The
# parameters include:
#
# $1 -- The company name as a directory, containing colours and logo.
# $2 -- The company name (normal case).
# $3 -- The company role (job title).
# $4 -- The relative path to the cover letter to typeset.
#
# Example:
#
# ./build.sh corp Corporation 'Job Title' template/cover-letter.md
readonly SCRIPT_SRC="$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[${#BASH_SOURCE[@]} - 1]}")"
readonly SCRIPT_DIR="$(cd "${SCRIPT_SRC}" >/dev/null 2>&1 && pwd)"
readonly COMPANY_DIR="${1:-template}"
readonly COMPANY_NAME="${2:-Template}"
readonly COMPANY_ROLE="${3:-Job Title}"
readonly PATH_COVER_LETTER="${4:-climate/cover-letter.md}"
readonly EMPLOYEE_NAME="${5:-Your Name}"
readonly EMPLOYEE_ROLE="${6:-Your Role}"
read -r COLOUR_FG COLOUR_BG COLOUR_AC < "$COMPANY_DIR/colours.txt"
readonly COLOUR_FG COLOUR_BG COLOUR_AC
magick \
signature-black.png \
-alpha extract \
-background "#${COLOUR_AC}" \
-alpha shape \
-define png:color-type=6 \
signature.png
rm -f ${HOME}/.local/share/keenwrite/logo_svg_*.pdf
keenwrite.bin \
-i "${PATH_COVER_LETTER}" \
-o cover-letter.pdf \
--set=employer.company.name="${COMPANY_NAME}" \
--set=employer.position.role="${COMPANY_ROLE}" \
--set=employee.name="${EMPLOYEE_NAME}" \
--set=employee.role="${EMPLOYEE_ROLE}" \
--set=employee.contact.phone="555-1212" \
--set=employee.contact.email="email@hostname" \
--set=employee.portfolio.url="gitlab.com/YourName" \
--set=employee.address.line.1="address 1" \
--set=employee.address.line.2="city, province" \
--set=employee.address.line.3="postal code" \
--metadata="foreground=${COLOUR_FG}" \
--metadata="background=${COLOUR_BG}" \
--metadata="accent=${COLOUR_AC}" \
--image-dir="${SCRIPT_DIR}/${COMPANY_DIR}" \
--theme-dir="${HOME}/dev/java/keenwrite/themes/aspiros"
exiftool \
-overwrite_original_in_place \
-Title="${EMPLOYEE_NAME}" \
-Author="${EMPLOYEE_NAME}" \
cover-letter.pdf
This saved me about 19 hours of work; hopefully it will save you time, as well. See also: https://xkcd.com/1205/
Looks nice! I do, however, see an issue with such tools, as they require people to maintain their CV. I don't want to hijack the thread so I won't link here unless asked to do so, but I've build something to keep developers' profiles up to date
please share?
I really love tools that treat documents as code. I have been trying to move my workflows away from binary formats (like PPT & Word) to text based ones I can more easily version control.
Does this support custom CSS for the layout or is it bound to the YAML templates?
It’s completely flexible. However, it's not done through CSS. We use Typst to generate PDFs, and we template Typst files using Jinja2 from YAML. You can override the built-in Typst templates; see the guide here: https://docs.rendercv.com/user_guide/how_to/override_default...
Why invent a new file format when there is https://jsonresume.org/? Its also quite easy to customize and add more things as it does not prohibit extra values
The JSON Resume schema did not support what we needed, so we deliberately created our own.
We wanted to define 9 different entry schemas that could be used under any section title. In our schema, each section, regardless of its title, contains a list composed of one of these nine entry types. This is different from the JSON Resume approach, where specific entry schemas are tied to specific sections (work schema for work section, etc.).
In RenderCV, users can choose any section title they want and use any of the 9 entry types within it. Each entry type is rendered differently in the generated PDF.
I have been through a huge over supply of AI generated CVs using similar tools this year. I am sure this will help people so not bashing the tool per se, but bare in mind that you will be joining the robots.
I don't know what the solution really is, but as much as I hate it, a verified Linkedin Profile is a huge signal now. Otherwise a real personal site with care and history. I am guilty of being bad with the second so - no easy answers. Maybe even a wacky looking CV would make me notice a candidate more. Powerpoint 90s style.
AI generated (and quite often fake) CVs are a fucking joke. I've spent many hours over the last 2 years going through the pile of them
Lots of people apply to places other than startups, and for positions other than developer.
A bit of a missed opportunity not to use the JSON Resume schema for this.
https://jsonresume.org/schema
We deliberately chose not to use JSON Resume because we wanted greater flexibility. For example, in RenderCV, you can use any section title you want and place any of the 9 available entry types under any section. In contrast, JSON Resume has predefined section titles, and each section is restricted to a predefined entry type. For instance, you must use the experience entry schema under the experience section.
I hear you. This boils town to personal opinion. I would have preferred to use an existing standard than introducing yet another one. The custom sections aren't something I've ever seen or needed anyway.
I’d love to know if this performs better than your average resume in OCR or scanning tools. I think if you could advertise that you follow some kind of arcane best practices, that would be super attractive to a lot of people.
I have a lot of anxiety about missing opportunities because of shitty OCR.
Thank you. We will add an analysis of how RenderCV PDFs perform with applicant tracking systems in docs at some point, but users have been reporting positive results. We generate the PDFs using Typst, which adheres to modern PDF standards.
I used this recently for my resume and I recommend it.
I have the technical background to write Latex and Typst documents but I honestly didn't want the headache. Plus I'm the type to futz with styling all day long instead of putting down actual content. RenderCV was simple to use and did exactly what I wanted.
Favorited for next time I make a resume - thanks for making this! Hopefully I’ll never have to touch LaTeX ever again.
This looks really interesting, but I’m wondering what this adds that someone can’t already do with Typst+a resume template. The basic-resume template already abstracts enough that you only need to care about content rather than formatting:
https://typst.app/universe/package/basic-resume/
Does anyone have examples of how they’re using the YAML?
RenderCV actually relies on its own Typst package: https://typst.app/universe/package/rendercv
Here are a couple of reasons, just a few that come to mind, why using YAML + RenderCV can be more appealing than working directly in Typst:
- Reusing the same content across multiple themes. YAML + RenderCV allows you to experiment with different themes and design options to the exact same content with no changes to the data itself. This is difficult to achieve in pure Typst, where switching templates typically means adapting your content to a different set of Typst commands.
- Centralized control over entry layouts. You can adjust how entire classes of entries are rendered from a single place—for example, changing the layout of all education entries at once, rather than editing each entry individually.
Wish I had seen this before making my resume in latex. One question, though to add publications, is it possible to use bibtex, or do you have to manually convert each publication to YAML?
Yes, unfortunately, you will need to convert them to YAML. I think an LLM can easily do that for you, though. This has been requested before, but we haven’t implemented it in order to keep our schema robust and simple. Maybe we should add it.
Yaml itself can be a resume.
This is clearly a real project that was built over several years with human effort (not vibe coded). Which makes it all the more depressing that the author decided to take a massive dump over the entire README.md with AI slop.
Sadly, it appears the project was heavily sloppified a mere 2 weeks ago: https://github.com/rendercv/rendercv/commit/5cc5fbdf9ec1a742...
Oh awesome! This is a great solution to resumes. The only thing I'd like more is a web app to run it in.
We do have that, but it’s a bit outdated. We’ll update it at some point: https://app.rendercv.com
I get the motivation, but it honestly feels a bit weird to use tens of thousands of lines of python code to do something that you can just directly do in typst.
I mean, a CV is not really rocket science and there are quite a few great typst templates out there.
As someone who's done a lot of hiring over the years and read/scanned thousands of resumes, I can attest: CVs are indeed rocket science.
Point taken, but I'd prefer 200 lines of rocket science that I understand and control over 60k lines of (cleanly written and documented) rocket science.
(Although admittedly both plain typst and this project are still way less complex than LaTeX.)
In tough job markets, submitting 100 résumés before getting hired is not uncommon. Of possible interest is my Creating Catchy Cover Letters blog post, which uses my Markdown editor, KeenWrite (https://keenwrite.com), to create PDF files styled to match a company's branding:
https://keenwrite.com/blog/2025/10/15/creating-catchy-cover-...
A handful of prospective managers told me that my cover letter stood out among hundreds of applicants.
Here's the full shell script I used to build cover letters (you'll need to point "theme dir" to the directory where the cover letter theme---aspiros---is found). With this script, creating a cover letter went from about 20 minutes down to 5. If you have any troubles getting it to work, contact me via https://whitemagicsoftware.com/.
This saved me about 19 hours of work; hopefully it will save you time, as well. See also: https://xkcd.com/1205/