When I was a first year graduate student at the ischool, I took a course called XML Foundations. At the time, the final homework assignment was to write your resume in XML, apply an XSLT transformation that makes HTML code and then attach a CSS. Well, I designed a CSS that I liked, so I stuck with that method to update and maintain my resume since then. Yes, that’s right. I write my resume in XML.
Let me back up and do some explaining for anyone looking for more information. Back in the day, the day being when I was an undergraduate, I would struggle using MS Word to edit my resume. There was a lot of spacebar, returning, tabbing, aligning, fixing the margins, etc. It was difficult to get the years to right align on the same line that the project was left aligned, etc. At the same time, if I ever decided to redo the look and feel of my resume, I would have to go through all of these struggles again. That’s where CSS makes your life easier. You can declare in the CSS that all dates should align right and all job titles should be italic. The CSS automatically does it all for everything your mark as a date, and everything you mark as a job title.
In my XML Foundations class I learned about separating the content from the design. XML is simply the wrapper for the content, and I believe its fairly easy to read. Here’s a sample piece of code:
<Education>
<higherEd>
<institution>University of California – Berkeley</institution>
<program>
<school>School of Information</school>
</program>
<degree>
<highestDegree>Masters in Information Management & Systems, Management of Technology Certificate, GPA: 3.67</highestDegree>
</degree>
</higherEd>
</Education>
You can read that this is the XML for my education at UC-Berkeley. Each “tag” that looks like <tag> is named in correlation with the piece of information it represents. So the <institution> is UC Berkeley and the Program > School was the School of Information. There’s a lot more explanation for this piece of code, but I’m going to leave it at that.
So, the advantages of doing it this way include:
- I can easily redo the design of my resume without modifying the content (you will see examples of this later when I offer up multiple designs)
- I can produce my resume in HTML which ensures consistent formatting (except for cross-browser problems – which I haven’t had yet).
- I can easily post it on the web and share it with a link rather than passing an attachment around through email.
Index:
- XML: The content of my resume.
- XSLT: The transformation of that content to HTML.
- CSS: The design that makes it look like a resume, versus a magazine cover.
Related posts:
I actually just got rejected from the iSchool PhD program at Berkeley. I was hoping to work with Marti Hearst, but one of her students told me she was going on sabbatical in the Fall so I don’t think she was taking any students.
What do you think of the iSchool at the U of Washington? I’m also in the SF bay area right now, and thinking about going there in the Fall.
Keep writing
Comment by jeff — March 25, 2008 @ 6:02 pm
You know, I really don’t know too much about the iSchool at UW. I found the iSchool @ Berkeley on a whim when I was applying for grad school, and even while I was a student, I didn’t know too much. If you have specific interests, I can talk to you more about it offline or point you to the right people.
Comment by admin — March 25, 2008 @ 7:16 pm
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Pingback by Second Thoughts » Blog Archive » I Killed My Graduate School Personal Website — February 27, 2009 @ 7:58 am
I have never been cursed with having to produce a resume in M$ Word. I think my first resume was developed under WordStar. Then for grins and giggles, I did my next resume in TROFF.
A little older and a little wiser, my next move was LaTeX. I will say that my pdf version is beautiful, but the HTML version leaves a lot to be desired. Of course, there was always the pimps (Contract Agencies) that wanted the resume in M$ Word format.
There are filters to convert a dvi file to HTML, rtf, and even open office, but the conversion was never smoothly transfered. I knew there had to be a better way to make a resume that flowed easily and allowed me to tailor the resume to meet the needs and requirements.
Welcome to XML Resume Library (http://xmlresume.sourceforge.net). Allows for the creation of a resume that will dump in pdf, html, text, or RTF. Allows for easy customization of the resume without a lot of stress.
The only problem is that the developers of the app stopped working on it several year ago. Does it get the job done? Yes it does! Is there a need for updating of the schema? Definitely!
But if you are a XML type, then by all means, take a look at this package. I have it running under both Linux as well as Mac OSX
Comment by K. Callis — April 13, 2010 @ 7:25 pm