Writing a resume with Git and markdown

After being made redundant, I needed to write a resume for the first time in ten years. Since 2014 every position I held was thanks to head-hunting by a recruiter, based on my LinkedIn profile, and I skipped straight to the interview stage. 2023 is an unfamiliar road, and we seem to be amid a severe contraction in the tech sector.

The last time I wrote a resume, I used either Apple Pages or Microsoft Word — I can’t remember which. Since then, I’ve spent the last ten years of my career writing docs as code I figured it was time I wrote my resume in Markdown and used Git for version control.

For my resume, I use as close to vanilla markdown as possible, so I can process it using any compiler. While I use MultiMarkdown on my Mac, keeping it vanilla means the content complies as expected with Pandoc, GitHub and Hugo.

The body of my resume uses only headings, paragraphs, lists, and code blocks. I also use a front-matter block (more on this later), which most markdown flavours and compilers support.

Here’s an excerpt of my current resume, but you can find the full version in my portfolio’s source code on GitHub, albeit with the front matter converted to TOML for better compatibility with Hugo.

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Title: Chris Gardiner-Bill Resume
Author: Chris Gardiner-Bill
Date: 2023-01-20
css…