LLM-Resume-Template: A LaTeX Resume Skeleton for LLM and Agent Engineer Applications

What the template is for, and who it is not for

The repository targets one narrow audience: people applying for LLM, Agent, RAG and NLP engineering roles who want to write their resume in LaTeX. The README states this directly, describing it as a template for large-model algorithm engineers applying to AI positions. The file layout backs that up. There are five .tex entry points, two class files, a Makefile, a fontawesome5 directory for icon fonts, and a CONTENT-GUIDE.md.

The interesting part is not the LaTeX. Plenty of LaTeX resume templates exist. What this one adds is resume-agent.tex, described in the README as an anonymised two-page A4 example for Agent and LLM roles that is not a copy of anyone's real history but a content skeleton. The README says it shows how to organise a resume around job positioning, public evidence, responsibility boundaries, key mechanisms, verification criteria and business results. That is a claim about structure, not about layout, and it is the reason to look at this repository rather than any other LaTeX template.

Who it is not for: anyone who wants Word or Google Docs output, anyone who needs a strict one-page resume, and anyone who does not want to think about LaTeX at all. The README offers Overleaf as the no-local-setup path, but the editing surface is still .tex source. If you have never seen a LaTeX document, the first hour will go into learning commands, not into writing about your work.

How the files fit together

The build is conventional LaTeX with one structural choice worth noting: the class files are split. resume.cls is described as the standard resume style file, and resume-photo.cls is a separate class that adds photo support. The photo version is not a flag on the standard class; it is a different class, and resume-photo.tex is the document that uses it. That means switching between photo and no-photo versions means switching documents, not toggling an option.

The Makefile confirms the intended compile path. Its SRCS variable lists only resume-zh.tex and resume-en.tex, so the default targets cover the Chinese and English no-photo versions. The recipe for each PDF is latexmk -xelatex, which means XeLaTeX is the expected engine, consistent with the README's instruction to set the Overleaf compiler to XeLaTeX. The all target concatenates the Chinese and English PDFs with Ghostscript into resume-zh+en.pdf, and dist packages the sources and PDFs into a dated tar.bz2. The Makefile also defines docker and podman targets that build inside a container, though the Dockerfile they reference is not listed among the repository's top-level entries, so that path may not work as written from a fresh clone.

Compilation is not a single pass. The README tells you to run xelatex twice on resume-agent.tex and resume-photo.tex, and the Makefile's latexmk recipe handles reruns automatically. Skipping the second pass is the most likely cause of a document that looks almost right.

Installing and compiling your first resume

The README gives three routes: Overleaf, a local editor such as Cursor or VSCode, and a local LaTeX installation. Overleaf is the one the README recommends first because it needs no environment setup. You download the project as a ZIP, upload it via New Project then Upload Project, open the Menu, set the Main document to resume-agent.tex or resume-photo.tex, and confirm the compiler is XeLaTeX before recompiling.

If you have TeX Live or MacTeX installed, the local path is short. The README's commands for the Agent version and the photo version are:

xelatex resume-agent.tex
xelatex resume-agent.tex

xelatex resume-photo.tex
xelatex resume-photo.tex

Each file is compiled twice; the README states the second pass is needed to generate correct contents and references. The Makefile offers a shorter route for the no-photo versions, where zh and en are separate targets:

make zh
make en

After the first successful compile you get a PDF next to the source. Then you edit. For the photo version, the README says the photo line sits at line 17 of resume-photo.tex and takes a filename:

\ResumePhoto{adongwanai.jpg}

Deleting or commenting that line drops the photo. For the no-photo versions the personal block uses different commands, and the README shows \name, \keywords and a \profile block containing \mobile, \email, \university, \degree and \birthday. Note that the placeholder conventions differ between files: the no-photo versions use XXXX and XX, while resume-agent.tex uses X/Y markers for metrics. The README is explicit that every X/Y figure must be replaced with data you can explain and verify. That sentence is the most useful line in the documentation.

The content guide is the real differentiator, and the README undersells it

CONTENT-GUIDE.md is listed in the file table as covering writing method, high-value signals and an upgrade checklist, and the README tells you to read it before writing. It is referenced twice and described in one line. That is thin for what is arguably the repository's main asset. The template files give you a container; the guide is supposed to tell you what to put in it, and the README does not summarise any of its advice, show an excerpt, or indicate its length.

The prompt examples in the README partially compensate. They are written for Cursor, ChatGPT or Claude and cover filling in personal details, research experience, internships, projects, batch placeholder replacement, and language polishing. Prompt 5 is the one to read carefully: it instructs the model to use real model names such as LLaMA, Qwen and GPT-4, real benchmarks such as MMLU, HumanEval and GSM8K, and improvement figures in the 5 to 20 percent range. That is a recipe for plausible-looking numbers, and it sits in tension with the resume-agent.tex warning that every metric must be one you can defend. Use the prompt to draft phrasing, not to generate figures you cannot reproduce.

The same caution applies to the sample bullets in the README, which include a research item citing a first-author paper submitted to NeurIPS 2025 and a project item describing a retrieval system. These are illustrative. Copying them without the underlying work produces a resume that fails the first technical follow-up question.

Limitations: licence, platform assumptions and the missing Dockerfile

The repository has no licence file. The README carries a CC BY 4.0 badge linking to the Creative Commons deed, and the description field lists the licence as unknown. A badge is not a licence file, and CC BY 4.0 is a content licence rather than a software licence, which is an unusual fit for a repository containing .cls and .tex source plus a Makefile. If you plan to redistribute a modified template, or to use it inside a company, the repository does not give you a file to point at. That is a real gap, not a formality.

The Makefile's docker target references a Dockerfile that does not appear in the repository's top-level entries. The recipe checks for the image, and if it is absent it creates an empty directory and runs docker build against it with -f Dockerfile. Without that file in the tree, the build step has nothing to work from. The podman target reuses the same logic with a different CLI variable. Treat containerised compilation as unverified until you confirm the Dockerfile exists somewhere in the tree.

Platform assumptions are also worth flagging. XeLaTeX is required, which rules out pdfLaTeX-only setups and some minimal TeX installations that ship without the XeTeX engine. The fontawesome5 directory ships icon fonts, so the icon commands depend on those files being present; if you copy a single .tex file out of the repository into another project, icons will break. And the template is two pages by design for the Agent version, which conflicts with the one-page norm at many employers, particularly in the US.

Alternatives and how they differ

The obvious comparison is Awesome-CV, a widely used LaTeX resume class. The difference is scope. Awesome-CV is a general-purpose class with a broad set of section types and a publication list; it does not ship a content guide, an anonymised worked example, or prompt scaffolding for AI-assisted editing. If your resume needs to cover teaching, grants or a long publication list, a general class fits better. LLM-Resume-Template is narrower and assumes your experience maps onto research, internship and project blocks aimed at model and agent work.

The second alternative is not a template at all: a plain Markdown or Word document. That route wins on tooling familiarity and on ATS parsing, which is a genuine concern the README does not address. LaTeX output is a PDF, and while PDFs are accepted nearly everywhere, you lose the ability to hand a recruiter an editable file. If a recruiter asks for a .docx, this repository cannot produce one.

A third option is to use the repository only for its content structure and write the resume in whatever tool you already use. resume-agent.tex is a two-page skeleton organised around positioning, evidence, responsibility boundaries, mechanisms, verification and results. That ordering is portable. You can lift it without touching LaTeX, which is arguably the highest-value way to use this project if you do not already know the toolchain.

Maintenance, upgrade cost and what to check before adopting

The repository is not archived, and the last push was on 2026-08-12. There are no releases, so there is no version to pin and no changelog to read. Upgrades therefore mean pulling from main and diffing your edits against the template. If you forked and edited the .tex files directly, as the README recommends, every upstream change to the class files or the example documents is a merge you have to resolve by hand. The README's advice to fork is sound for preserving your version, but it does not explain how to absorb later changes.

The practical upgrade cost is low if you keep your content in the entry-point .tex files and leave resume.cls, resume-photo.cls and fontawesome5 untouched. It rises sharply if you modify the class files, because the class is what the upstream author is most likely to change. Keeping personal content in a separate file that inputs the class is the cheaper arrangement, though the repository does not ship that split by default.

On licence: the README's CC BY 4.0 badge, if it reflects the author's intent, would require attribution when you redistribute the template. CC BY 4.0 does not map cleanly onto LaTeX class files, and the absence of a LICENSE file leaves the question open. If attribution or commercial use matters to you, ask the maintainer rather than inferring from a badge. This is not legal advice; it is a statement that the repository does not answer the question.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt it if you already write LaTeX or plan to edit in Overleaf, and if your target roles are LLM, Agent, RAG or NLP positions where the resume-agent.tex structure matches how you want to present evidence. Do not adopt it if you need Word output, a one-page format, or a template whose licence you can point to in a file; the repository ships no LICENSE file and the README's CC BY 4.0 badge is the only statement. Before you invest editing time, verify three things: that resume-agent.tex compiles under XeLaTeX in your environment, that CONTENT-GUIDE.md covers the metrics you actually have, and that the CC BY 4.0 badge matches what you intend to do with the output.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. adongwanai/LLM-Resume-Template on GitHub
2. Issues
3. README