I started writing my Resume in Markdown a while ago. I started out just using Pandoc to convert it to pdf. Overtime, I started my own little build process going. I use rake.

Originally, I setup with targets specifically for PDF and DOCX. I did this because although most of the time sending in a PDF is good enough, occasionally someone asks for it as a Word Doc.

Eventually, I felt the need of customizing the resume between Full Stack and Platform roles that I was seeking. To make this work, I have divided into headers that a specific to the various roles, as well as a base resume file. Then, I just combine them as required in Pandoc with different Rake tasks.

My rakefile looks like this:

task :default => :pdf

task :pdf => [:fs, :pe, :as]

task :fs do
  sh "pandoc header-fs.md resume-base.md -s -o duggins-fs-resume.pdf"
end

task :pe do
  sh "pandoc header-pe.md resume-base.md -s -o duggins-pe-resume.pdf"
end

task :as do
  sh "pandoc header-as.md resume-base.md -s -o duggins-as-resume.pdf"
end

task :html do
  sh "pandoc resume.md -s -o duggins-resume.html --metadata pagetitle=\"David Duggins Resume\""
end

task :docx do
  sh "pandoc header-fs.md resume-base.md -s -o duggins-fs-resume.docx"
  sh "pandoc header-pe.md resume-base.md -s -o duggins-pe-resume.docx"
end

Basically, when I generate a pdf, it creates one of each of the types. So when I update my resume, I regenerate the pdf’s and it sets them up for all of the variants at once.

A few things that I am aiming to do in the future would be to also sperate the section building out and be able to generate either a pdf or a Word Doc more dynamically and the other would be to add a date to the titles and maybe add a cleanup function that would only keep the last 2-3 versions of the resume on hand.