Yeah, we'd obviously love to have this, but the Word formatting engine is horrendous... just try taking any html document and importing it into Word and see what it looks like.

Hopefully, we can eventually replace those large internal systems that process Word documents with real tools that can search and categorize the structured data.

You could have some sort of "degraded" resume version in .rtf. It seems like .rtf is decent, but doesn't have as much customization as a word document. Of course, I could be wrong. It's not the best solution, but it is something that can be passed around from person to person, edited, and even re-imported with much less fuss than trying to use a Word document.

However, any time someone does that, that's a part of the process that isn't taking place on JobSpice.

"However, any time someone does that, that's a part of the process that isn't taking place on JobSpice."

This is the real reason not to offer Word export. They can try to convince HR departments to use JobSpice for their resume filtering and searching needs, instead of just a place to download resumes into their internal systems and never returning to use other services.

A noble goal, but it seems very unlikely. Shifting Fortune 1000 companies or large recruiting firms to use a whole new system would be an amazingly unlikely and long-time framed change. Best of luck if that's your goal though, it would be an improvement.

Until then though, lack of Word export is a liability for people who build their resumes on your site.

I wonder if perhaps scripting Open Office could be doable? I have looked (briefly) into the Open Document standard (I think that was the name), but it seemed too painful to me. I have some faint hope that creating word documents via the Open Office scripting API could be easier.

That is, rather than trying to create valid XML, just call a method on an empty open office doc that say 'creteHeading("abc")'

And so on... Of course probably it won't work, but it is the only hope I see on the horizon. (My problem is actually going from LaTex to Word).

Agreed that the Word formatting engine is horrendous.

However, one thing you might want to do is just generate a "standard format" Word doc (without all the fancy layout/design/template). This way, those that really, really need a Word version (or think they do), will have it.

Won't most companies accept PDF these days? Their systems should be able to search those as well...

Congrats Andrew and Dane on the launch.

Many recruiters want a Word document so they can easily censor your contact information and plaster their own on top.

Not to mention rewrite it, add skills, etc.

Perhaps that request is a good sign to stay away from those types of people then...

I don't think I'm alone in saying it: I would never work for a company that required a Word resume.

Unless maybe you need the money and can not find another job? If you can be picky about the companies you work for, you probably don't need an online resume generator anyway?

True that. I was scouring job ads, and found some that required me to copy-paste my resume into the body of an email.

Yeah, we're working on making "plaintext" styles right now. Even ASCII could use a little JobSpice love.

What's the deal with the /static/{js|css}/combined.(hash) stuff? Is that part of a home-brewed deployment solution?

Yeah, we implemented a build process that combines and minifies all the CSS and JS files, and also converts all the images to sprites to cut down on requests. The hash is to facilitate more efficient caching (you can set it to never expire).

I've been toying with the idea of open-sourcing it, but it would definitely need some cleanup first.

Emurse.com has had Word/PDF/RTF export for years.

Yeah, but their templates are specifically designed by them with this in mind, which is why there are only a handful to choose from and they aren't very interesting.

Since we allow anything that can be done with CSS, and allow people to upload their own templates, the problem of exporting to different formats is significantly more difficult.