XMLRésuméLibrary: User Guide

Advanced Features of the XML Résumé Library

Filtering to target your resume

Filtering allows you to maintain a single, complete resume.xml file that represents the entirety of your career/academic record, while allowing for the simple creation of targeted resumes.

Consider the following snippet of Jane Doe's resume:

<skillset>
            <skill>Carpentry</skill>
            <skill>Welding</skill>
            <skill>Java Programming</skill>
            <skill>XML</skill>
            <skill>C++</skill>
	    <skill>Good communicator</skill>
            <skill>Gourmet Pastry Creation</skill>
            <skill>Cooking for construction workers</skill>
          </skillset>

The problem here is that Jane needs to maintain a record of all her skills, but she doesn't need to tell a potential employer about all of those skills. Sure, Jane could selectively comment out portions of her resume, but this can be tedious. Instead, she should use attributes to describe which categories of resume a given element applies to:

<skillset>
            <skill targets="construction,woodworking">Carpentry</skill>
            <skill targets="construction">Welding</skill>
            <skill targets="programming">Java Programming</skill>
            <skill targets="programming">XML</skill>
            <skill targets="programming">C++</skill>
	    <skill>Good communicator</skill>
            <skill targets="foodservice">Gourmet Pastry Creation</skill>
            <skill targets="foodservice+construction">Cooking for construction workers</skill>
          </skillset>

After defining her targets, Jane can filter her resume to produce beautifully-formatted, well-focused resumes to send to employers. Her "construction" resume will contain only those elements applicable to the construction industry, and the job foreman won't have to read about her vast knowledge of meringues and bundt cakes, or her experience coding up an application server in Java.

You may have noticed that some of Jane's skills apply to more than one target, or apply only when two (or more) targets are defined. By specifying a list of targets (separated by commas), Jane can ensure that her Carpentry skill will be included in both "construction" and "woodworking" resumes. Similarly, her "Cooking for construction workers" skill will apply only to resumes where both "foodservice" AND "construction" are targeted.

Elements that have no "targets" attribute are always included in the filtered output. Thus Jane's communications skills will apply to every resume.

To get a better idea of how this all works, take a look at examples/example2.xml. Trying making the complete resume (with make all resume=example2), and then the filtered version (make filter resume=example2). Then compare example2.txt with example2-filtered.txt. To create resumes targeted to other purposes, change filter_targets in Makefile.

Customizing your résumé

With just a few tweaks, you can dramatically change the look of your résumés.

Modifying the XSL Parameters

The first thing to do to customize your resume is to check out the parameters files. The main file is xsl/params.xsl, which contains general parameters that you can change. We suggest making a backup of this file by issuing the command cp params.xsl params.xsl.dist, and then playing around with the values inside params.xsl to see how they affect the output of your resumes.

Note

You will need to change xsl_base in Makefile to point to your local xsl directory before any of your changes can take effect.

Located in the xsl/paper directory are the a4.xsl and letter.xsl files. These files specify things like margin size and indent size for their respective paper formats.

The xsl/country directory contains country-specific parameter files, which contain translations for everything from "Résumé" to "Mobile Telephone". If you would prefer your résumé to be called a Curriculum Vitae, this is where to look. The files are sorted by a 2-letter country code (e.g., nl.xsl for the Netherlands). If you don't see your country there, or if there are errors/omissions in the translations, please attempt a translation and submit the changes back to the project-- while XML may work across all languages, the gentle developers of the XML Résumé Library Project do not.

Modifying the look of your HTML Résumé

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are a powerful way to format the look of your HTML Résumé. A selection of sample CSS files are provided in the css directory. If you have not already done so, try changing the value of css.href in params.xsl to a different stylesheet (you may have to adjust the location of the stylesheets). Once you find one you like, you can tweak it by editing the CSS file by hand, or create one that is entirely your own.