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Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

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Re: Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

#21
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/.

    #!/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 
This saved me about 19 hours of work; hopefully it will save you time, as well. See also: https://xkcd.com/1205/

Re: Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

#22

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.

Re: Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

#23
post #14

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…

Lots of people apply to places other than startups, and for positions other than developer.

Re: Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

#24

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.)

Re: Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

#25
post #18

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?

Re: Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

#27
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?

Re: Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

#28

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...

Re: Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

#29
post #26

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.

Re: Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

#30
First of all, thank you for making this. I used it in my recent job search and it was fantastic.

Second, if I may make a request, could you please follow SemVer? I tried rendering my resume again last week, only 3 or 4 months after having made it originally with RenderCV version 2 point something I cannot recall, and it would not work. The design schema and perhaps also the CLI options have changes so much that I expect I would need to spend 2 to 4 hours getting it to work again, and there is no guarantee that it would not break again in another month. I would have appreciated if the versioning scheme followed SemVer, so I would know that any v2 engine would work and v3 engine would not.

I also would appreciate it if you could write detailed migration docs between versions and/or recommendations in error messages. The reason I think migrating my CV would take so long is that I have to go by trial and error, searching for similar-sounding parameter names and replacing them one-by-one. I gave up after an hour of this as I was nowhere near done.

Third, is markdown render supposed to miss information or is it a bug? Some sections of the resume would not end up in the markdown version, only showing section title and nothing else. If this is not expected behaviour, please let me know.

Again, thank you for making this. I look forward to using it again in the future.

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