Preparing a resume may not sound difficult, but in practice, it can be quite time-consuming. Nowadays, many jobs have specific requirements for niche knowledge or projects. With so many job seekers, a resume that doesn’t highlight the key points relevant to the job requirements might be overlooked by employers. Therefore, to achieve better results, it’s best to tailor your resume for each position… This is something AI should be good at, but at least for now, I haven’t found a good free tool for this.
Recently, I came across RenderCV, a tool that generates resumes from YAML configuration files. It enables a “configuration-as-resume” approach. Combining it with an AI coding assistant like Aider essentially creates a rapid resume preparation environment.
Components of the Container
The container’s components are straightforward:
- Pixi: Used to install dependencies, namely RenderCV and Aider
- Aider: Used to generate a rough draft of the resume configuration file, and can also be used directly for translation
- RenderCV: Generates the resume from the configuration file
- PDF Preview Extension: Allows viewing the generated PDF resume directly in VSCode. Combined with RenderCV’s
--watchparameter, it also enables real-time preview of changes.
Launching the Container
Using GitHub Codespace: The most convenient way is to directly leverage GitHub’s Codespace. After forking my container project, you can prepare your resume in the web version of VSCode. Once generated, the resume can also be downloaded directly from the container to your local machine.
Using Devpod: Using Devpod is also simple. With any provider set up, run
devpod up https://github.com/SilenWang/RenderCV_Podto start writing.
Notes on Using Aider for Resume Configuration Generation
Currently, I’m using the DeepSeek API for resume generation. Possibly because the RenderCV project itself is relatively new, DeepSeek clearly doesn’t know what the RenderCV configuration file should look like. It can produce files that appear plausible, but the section parts are completely incorrect. You still need to refer to RenderCV’s documentation to make corrections. Of course, RenderCV is designed to be simple and fast, so learning these adjustments takes only about 10 minutes and isn’t a major issue.
Additionally, providing a complete example to the AI can largely avoid the aforementioned problems. I’ll supplement the project with examples when I have time.
