I was recently inspired to update my Software Engineering resume. The problem with that was that up until now my resume was a Word docx document that I would manually export as PDF and distribute. I used to always get frustrated when I had to touch this document because I hate formatting text in Word and/or Google Docs.

After stumbling upon this Techlead video on YouTube I was convinced that I didn’t need any fancy layouts for my CV anyway and that I would go with a minimalist plain-text approach.

If you’re like me and you don’t need pie charts on your resume, you might be asking:

Why not write my resume in good old Markdown? Why not just make it open-source on Github as well? Why not use Github Actions to build a distributable PDF version of it? 🤔

Hey, that’s what I did! And I find it pretty cool. So I recommend you do it, too. Here’s why.

The Opensource Markdown Resume ™️

Easy to write and maintain!

It’s one file. It’s simple af. I only used headings and bullet lists and decided that it was enough to get my points across.

You can see it on Github and fork it or whatever.

Automated PDF export!

I found this markdown-to-pdf Github Action that exports - you guessed it - Markdown to PDF. It renders the PDF with the default Github styling, so the result (preview available here) looks very similar to the web version.

Here’s the full annotated Github Action that I’m using now:

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - '*'                                                 # (1)

name: Upload Release Asset

jobs:
  build:
    name: Upload Release Asset
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Remove swag line                              # (2)
        run: sed -i '1d' README.md
      - name: Build PDF from Markdown                       # (3)
        uses: BaileyJM02/markdown-to-pdf@v1
        with:
          input_dir: .
          output_dir: out
      - name: Rename pdf
        run: cp out/README.pdf ./leonid_koftun_resume.pdf
      - name: Create Release                                # (4)
        id: create_release
        uses: actions/create-release@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          tag_name: ${{ github.ref }}
          release_name: Release ${{ github.ref }}
          draft: false
          prerelease: false
      - name: Upload Release Asset                          # (5)
        id: upload-release-asset
        uses: actions/upload-release-asset@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          upload_url: ${{ steps.create_release.outputs.upload_url }}
          asset_path: ./leonid_koftun_resume.pdf
          asset_name: leonid_koftun_resume.pdf
          asset_content_type: application/pdf

Annotations

  1. Build PDF when any tag is pushed
  2. (Optional) This is just ‘pre-processing’ to remove some HTML content that I don’t want to be rendered to PDF (the first line of the Markdown contains some links that only make sense on the Github web view)
  3. The actual markdown-to-pdf step with minimal config
  4. Creates a Github release for the tag
  5. Uploads the generated PDF to the tagged release

The opensource aspect

As you probably noticed by now, my resume is publicly available on Github.

Potential employers and recruiters can grab a copy there. My peers and colleagues can review it and tell me what I suck at the most (come at me).

Any issues with this?

Yes.

  • If you want to use fancy column layouts and colors and unicorns 🦄 in your resume, then this probably isn’t for you (you could make it complicated and add CSS and templating but that kind of defeats the purpose of simplicity in the .md approach IMO).
  • If you’re afraid of me or one of my cats copying some lines from your own personal resume, I do not recommend that you make it public.

Conclusion

Keep your resume simple by using Markdown, publish it on Github if you want to be a cool kid.

What do you think of this nonsense? #hmu on Twitter or Instagram. 🤙