Modified June 14, 2023 | 8 minute read

How To Create A Resume Using HTML

Mobile-responsive, printable, ATS-friendly, and matches your theme

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In this article, I'll show you how to create an awesome web resume that can also be printed and used how you would expect a resume to be used. If you'd like to spare yourself from reading the whole thing, you can get code for the templete on GitHub. (Here's a preview of the template.)

You can also check out my resume to see a finished product. Here are some screenshots from the time of writing:

Context

After creating this website, I realized my resume was a bit outdated, so I wanted to make a new one that matched my website's theme.

I didn't want to use a document editor like Word because that's way too restricive, I didn't want to use Latex (like I did for my last resume) because that's too annoying and time consuming, and I didn't want to use Kickresume (even though all the LinkedIn influencers rave about it) because it still isn't flexible enough (especially the free version).

So I thought; if only I could create a resume using HTML, then I could make it however I want...

How To Do It

I use Tailwind CSS, but the concepts can be applied to other frameworks too.

The key to this is the existence of print-specific options. In Tailwind CSS, there's a super convenient print modifier (docs link). This way, we can make two column layouts collapse down on mobile, use cool styles (such as rounded edges), and have other things on the screen (such as buttons), then use the modifier to make the page the right size and hide those extra buttons when we print it.

There's an issue, though. No matter how hard you try to use print modifiers, there are still margins around the outside with these stamps when you try to print the page:

Luckily, there are two ways to solve this. When you are printing the page, you can open the "More settings" option and select "None" for "Margins".

The other solution works by default without messing with any settings. You can use the @page CSS rule to remove the margins:

That should get you started on creating your own resume, but you can also keep reading and I'll walk you through how I created the template I linked at the beginning!

Template

You can check out the code for this website if you want to see exactly how I created my resume, but my project structure and all the code specific to my resume might make it harder to adapt my code for your own purposes. So, I've created a template for a static site using Tailwind CSS which you can use! You can find it on GitHub, or follow along with my explanations here.

Tutorial

For this tutorial, I'm assuming knowledge of Tailwind CSS.

To start, I created a project by following Tailwind's installation process. However, I changed a line in tailwind.congfig.js to content: ["./index.html"], and used npx tailwindcss -i input.css -o output.css --watch to build the CSS file. You can check the GitHub repository if you're having issues.

Now, we will create our resume inside index.html

In the body, the outer div is the background, and just adds some padding around the edges (but removes the padding when we print). The middle div is our actual page. I added some styles so that on big screens the page has an 8.5/11 aspect ratio which closely resembles how the page looks when it's actually printed, but on smaller screens the page is as long as it needs to be to fit all the content.

I also added rounding to the edges, a shadow, etc., but then removed those styles for printing.

A width of 52rem isn't particularly special, it was just a good size for me and worked well with some of the other things I had going on with my website. print:h-[100vh] ensures that the pdf is only one page (when you don't add that there's an empty second page).

The inner div adds padding around the edges and is a flex box to make sure our resume content fits inside the page how its supposed to.

This is what we have so far (I made the background red to visualize the padding):

Now, let's add a header to the resume. Add the following where the "resume content goes here" comment was:

I put my name on the left and some social links on the right. You could add a headshot in the middle like the resume templates on Kickresume have, but I have heard recruiters say not to in order to avoid bias and for them to avoid bias accusations, so I removed the headshot from my resume. (Another idea is to have a version with a headshot and a version without, as it could add a nice touch if the person looking at your resume already knows who you are!)

Underneath, add the following:

The reason I made a separate mobile header is because on small screens, there's too much content to fit it all in a row. On mobile the links won't be in the header area, and we'll instead add the links underneath with the rest of the content in the next step (you can obviously switch up these details however you want):

The outer div uses flex flex-col sm:flex-row so that on mobile screens it collapses down to one column.

I also put this between the header from earlier and the body from just now to add a gap:

Lastly, make sure input.css looks like the following:

And we're done! Here's the final product (I made the columns red for the picture so that you can visualize them):

Now all you have to do is add some text bragging about yourself and (hopefully) get some interviews.

Full Code

Here's the full code found on GitHub if you want to copy and paste (I also filled in the "content goes here" comments with some placeholder text):

Conclusion

If you are interested in how I made other parts of my website, such as the sticky nav bar, turning markdown files into articles, links with cool underline animations, fade-in effects, etc., I would be happy to write articles explaining! Otherwise, let me know if you actually end up using my template. Also, message me on LinkedIn if you want me review your resume for free and tell you if I have any ideas on how to improve it!

Thanks for reading, I hope this was helpful!