Creating an electronic Curriculum Vitae
Any now and then, one ends up needing to provide a Curriculum Vitae AKA Résumé (CV).
Either for applying for a job or just to be used to assert your credentials (for example while running for project fundings), you always end up needing an updated CV.
So what do most people do ?
- They keep a document of their idea of a CV
- They keep a document formated using the “Europass standard”
- They keep it online using services such as LinkedIn
Of course there are other options 
One of such options (and my favourite) is to use an industry standard XML specification to provide your CV.
My first contact with HR-XML was through a friend that is(was) developing the University Curriculum Vitae Editing/Management System [http://curriculum.ua.pt/]. Ultimately I used the university system to generate the first version of my CV, and from then on I “simply” edit the file and add any new reference.
The lack of an editing tool is nonetheless the most important aspect limiting the mainstream adoption of this standard. But with so many developers around (hint 
)…
Posted: November 2nd, 2007 under English.
Tags: Education, Jobs, tip
Comments
Comment from dgomes
Time 2 November, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Vitor:
… the demo didn’t work (500 error message) 
Comment from Alcides Fonseca
Time 2 November, 2007 at 7:27 pm
I also did my CV recently, but I opted for a microformat hResume. Since I work a lot with Web, I chose what I feel is the future: semantic blocks inside HTML. And can be parsed to get all the info needed.
Take a look at:
http://microformats.org/wiki/hresume
and my own example
http://alcides.ideias3.com/public/aboutme/cv.html
Comment from dgomes
Time 2 November, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Well before I used HR-XML, I too had “my own” microformat …
The problem is… who can use it besides the “micro”community ? Only through industry support can a standard pick up (why else submit odf and ooxml to ISO )?
With HR-XML you can submit your CV to hundreds of company’s and institutions that support an industry standard
Comment from Vitor
Time 2 November, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Hmm.. I just tried and it worked fine for me. (direct link: http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/DB2pureXMLDemo/Demo.html) Can you try again?
AFAIK, me being inside the firewall shouldn’t make any difference.
Comment from dgomes
Time 2 November, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Now I did got to see the demo
Unfortunantely once in a while I still get a 500 error while browsing through them….
Comment from Vitor
Time 2 November, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Probably server overload, as it also hosts other alphaworks projects. Anyway, I’ll forward that info.
Regarding the http://curriculum.ua.pt/ service, do you happen to know how do they store the XML? Is it in a plain CLOB column? And how are updates done? Did they build their own forms, or used xForms for example? Sorry about all the questions, but since I’ve been playing with these things I’m very curious about how are other people doing the same things
Comment from Sérgio Santos
Time 2 November, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Well, LinkedIn supports hResume and it might be one of the major curriculum’s archive. There are some more examples here and there are certainly more through out the web. And if you use a tool like Optimus it might just be one of the easiest formats to parse.
And another thing, the hResume draft page doesn’t scare anyone off like this.
Comment from dgomes
Time 2 November, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Vitor: Good questions, but unfortunately I’m not the right person to answer them
Sergio: Points taken but for now I’ll stick to HR-XML has it’s more then a web standard . By the way it was your post that triggered mine, but your blog doesn’t seem to have a traceback mechanism
Comment from Vitor
Time 3 November, 2007 at 4:31 am
Sergio: the target audience of hResume and HR-XML are completely different. Most industry standards are not adopted by the industry just because they are a cool standard. Industry Standards are adopted because there is a whole lifecycle on top of it, including audit procedures, complete solutions for integration with legacy applications and standards and whatsoever. You can change your resume format any time you want. A HR company sharing information with a network of hundreds other companies can’t.
Just as an example, last month I was at a conference with 7,000 participants (not including attendees) and I would say that 90% of the booths in there were related to SEPA[1] and the underlying standard[2] UNIFO - ISO 20022. Bottom line, nobody cares the standard website. Most certainly, the decision makers never saw the website or read the standard specification, because what they are interested on is how can they implement the standard (impose by law in this case) and comply to all national and international audit and control procedures, never losing competitiveness in the market. It doesn’t matter if one standard is prettier than the other. What matters is the underlying infrastructure of each one.
1 - http://www.ecb.int/paym/sepa/html/links.en.html
2 - http://www.iso20022.org
Comment from Sérgio Santos
Time 3 November, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Mephisto still doesn’t support it, unfortunately, but at least I don’t have to worry about spam going in that way 
Comment from Vitor
Time 2 November, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Interesting! I worked with HR-XML early this year to develop some online demos (http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/purexml “View Demo” on top right) but didn’t notice it could also be used for writing resumes. That’s the “problem” with industry wide standards. They contain so many different schemas that it is hard to know about all of them.