You develop in Linux and are looking for work, and are requested to provide CV as a .doc file - what would you do?

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

> For some people who don't know better ".doc" or "word format" is a catch-all
> phrase meaning "something I can read on my PC". If you send them a PDF file
> (for example) and it just opens when they click it, they wouldn't know it isn't
> a .doc file ;-)

But some other people insist on a doc file because they can edit it..
Most typically these are placement companies, headhunters, and such
others who add their own opinions, recommendations, interview
summaries, logos, etc. Sometimes they also want to strip direct
comtact information from the CV. Being on the other (hiring) end from
time to time I've seen my share of these.

These folks cannot edit PDFs (without a major expense and effort of
acquiring and learning to use some Adobe product, which is out of the
question), and they also think they are at a disadvantage if they send
two files (the original CV and their summary) instead of one.

I have also heard - I cannot confirm it but it does not sound too
farfetched - that some HR departments use content management systems,
i.e., some sort of a database with a GUI, to store CVs, applications,
interview summaries, etc., and some such systems barf on any
attachment that is not .doc. (Maybe they won't barf with some
additional configuration, but that's too much to ask.)

> That being said, my CV is written in TeX, not OpenOffice, so I have to admit
> that if somebody insisted to have it in .doc, I'm not really sure what I would
> do...

My CV is written in LaTeX as well. I convert it to HTML using
latex2html and do some relatively minor manual tweaks to the result. I
go through this effort specifically for people who do not have a PDF
reader.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | oleg at goldshmidt.org