Resume Creator

A comprehensive resume creation skill that uses first-principles thinking, web research, and iterative visual refinement to craft tailored, professional resumes.

When to Use This Skill

• User wants to create a new resume
• User wants to update/optimize an existing resume
• User mentions a job application, job posting, or target company
• User asks about resume formatting or CV creation
• User wants to tailor their resume for a specific role

Process Overview

Phase 1: Information Gathering

1. Read existing materials (if available):

   • Existing resume (PDF, Word, or text)
   • LinkedIn profile screenshots (Claude cannot directly access LinkedIn URLs)
   • Portfolio or personal website

2. Understand the target:

   • Job description (if provided)
   • Target company and role
   • Industry/role type
   • Career goals

3. Research the target company using web search:

   • Company culture and values
   • Tech stack and engineering practices
   • Recent news, funding, products
   • What they look for in candidates
   • Example searches:
     • "{company} engineering blog hiring"
     • "{company} careers culture values"
     • "{role} at {company} interview what they look for"

4. Gather missing information by asking the user:

   • Recent experience not on resume
   • Specific achievements with metrics
   • Skills and technologies used
   • Projects and speaking engagements

Phase 2: First-Principles Analysis

Before writing, analyze from first principles:

1. Research what hiring managers look for:

   • Web search: "{role} resume what hiring managers look for 2024"
   • Web search: "Paul Graham hiring engineers startups" (for startup roles)
   • Understand the <8 second resume scan reality

2. Alignment analysis: Create a table mapping: | Job Requirement | User's Experience | Gap/Strength |

3. Paul Graham / YC style considerations (for startup roles):

   • Lead with what you BUILT, not job titles
   • Show speed of execution ("shipped in X weeks")
   • Quantify everything (%, numbers, scale)
   • Builder tone: "Built", "Shipped", "Won" not "Responsible for"
   • Remove corporate buzzwords

Phase 3: LaTeX Resume Creation

Use the Harvard-style LaTeX template with:

• Clean header (name, location, contact, links)
• No colored header bars - clean white background
• Section order: Experience → Projects & Speaking → Skills → Education → Leadership
• € symbol for currencies
• 1 page maximum

Key formatting:

• Font: Helvetica Neue (or similar sans-serif)
• Colors: Navy blue (#14-2D-4B) for sections
• Margins: ~0.5 inches
• Line spacing: 1.05

Phase 4: Iterative Visual Refinement

Critical: After creating the LaTeX file, iterate visually:

1. Compile to PDF:

   xelatex -interaction=nonstopmode resume.tex
   

2. Convert to high-resolution image:

   pdftoppm -png -r 300 resume.pdf resume_preview
   

3. Read the image using the Read tool to visually inspect

4. Check for issues:

   • Does it fit on 1 page?
   • Is spacing balanced?
   • Are there overflow issues?
   • Is typography clean?

5. Iterate until perfect

Phase 5: Final Delivery

1. Save final PDF: Resume_[Name]_[Role]_[Year].pdf
2. Keep .tex source file
3. Clean up temp files
4. Open PDF for user

Content Guidelines

Experience Bullets

Good (action + metric + result):

• Built real-time fraud detection pipeline processing 50M+ transactions/day, reducing chargebacks by 23%
• Shipped MVP in 4 weeks, reduced costs 50% for pilot customers

Bad (vague/passive):

• Responsible for platform development
• Worked on various projects

Skills Organization

• AI/ML: LangChain, LangGraph, DSPy, RAG, Vector DBs
• Full-Stack: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Node.js, Python
• Data & Infra: Postgres, Redis, Docker, GCP, Azure
• Languages: German (native), English (fluent)

How Users Should Use This Skill

For best results, provide:

1. Your current resume (PDF or text)
2. LinkedIn screenshots (profile, experience, posts) — Claude cannot directly access LinkedIn URLs
3. The job posting or target company/role
4. Any recent achievements not on your resume

Example:

Help me update my resume for the Product Engineer role at Langdock.
Here's my current resume: [attach PDF]
LinkedIn: [attach screenshots of profile and experience]