LaTeX CV with Biblatex

Overview

The journey of a researcher is a long one; every researcher will accumulate an abundance of research qualifications, publications, presentations, awards, and teaching experience over time. As a result, a curriculum vitae (CV for short) is an absolute necessity for job applications and annual performance reviews in the academic, public, or private sectors, as well as just keeping track of publications.

In the academic world, LaTeX is the standard formatting language and for good reason: LaTeX makes formatting easy for maintenance and quick updates. It’s for this very reason that I’ve created a CV entirely in LaTeX. To further tailor this for academics, the CV has integration with the awesome biblatex package to easily update and maintain publications of all kinds.

Prerequisites

To work with the source code and tailor this CV for your own needs, you will need the following installed:

Latest version of MikTeX or TeXLive.
The following LaTeX packages: newtxttext, fontenc, geometry, ragged2e, fancyhdr, xcolor, url, hyperref, booktabs, fmtcount, refcount, datetime, titlesec, lastpage, paralist, enumitem, array, and biblatex.

Details

Preamble

Before the actual CV document is rendered, your preamble (in the .tex file) should look similar to the following (don’t mind the comments):

\documentclass[a4paper, 10pt]{article}

%% Loading .sty file
\usepackage{tran_paul_le_cv}

%% Adding space before section headings
\titlespacing{\section}{0pt}{2ex}{1ex}

%% Entering in name and information
\name{Paul L. Tran}
\info{Office: & \href{https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/economics/ph-d-program/}{Department of Economics},\\
  & College of Liberal Arts,\\
  & University of Texas at Austin,\\
  & 2225 Speedway,\\
  & BRB 2.128, C3100,\\
  & Austin, Texas 78712\\
  \textbf{Citizenship}: & \textbf{United States of America}\\
  Cell: & +1 (512) 704-3025\\
  Email: & \href{mailto:[email protected]}{[email protected]}\\
  Website: & \href{https://paulletran.com/}{https://paulletran.com/}
}

%% Setting up bibliography
\addbibresource{tran_paul_le_cv_wps.bib}
\addbibresource{tran_paul_le_cv_wips.bib}
\DeclareSourcemap{
  \maps[datatype = bibtex, overwrite]{
    \map{
      \step[fieldset = month, null]
    }
  }
}
\ExecuteBibliographyOptions{useprefix = true}

%% Add selected items from .bib files to be shown
\addtocategory{wps}{
  tran_opecnn,
}
\addtocategory{wips}{
  tran_moretimepls,
}

The packages installed are all listed in the .sty file.
Your name should be placed in the \name command.
Relevant contact information should be placed into the \info command. The argument is essentially a long string structured as a tabular environment with two columns, but feel free to remove or add custom rows and columns to suit your needs.

The final section of your preamble should be for bibliographies. You should declare each .bib file in their individual \addbibresource commands (using my CV as an example, I have two .bib files for working papers and works-in-progress). The \addtocategory command allows you to specify what BibTeX entry types you want to both count in your total publications and display in the CV itself. You can find out more about all the standard entry types here.

The .sty file currently has the following pre-defined categories:

label	Category
books	Books
papers	Refereed research papers
chapters	Book chapters
conferences	Papers in conference proceedings
bookreviews	Book reviews
editorials	Editorials
phd	Dissertation
subpapers	Submitted papers
wps	Working papers
wips	Works in progress

You can also create customised categories if you find the aforementioned categories not suitable. For example, if you have published software packages and wish to a specific category for those contributions, simply add the following into the .sty file

\makebibcategory{software}{Published software packages}

Document

After the preamble, your .tex file should look like this (again using my own CV as an example):

\begin{document}
  \maketitle
  \thispagestyle{firststyle}
  \section{Education}
  ~\begin{tabular}{llll}
    2020 - & \textbf{PhD} & Economics & University of Texas at Austin\\
    2023 & \textbf{MS en Passant} & Economics & University of Texas at Austin\\
    2017 & \textbf{BA} & Mathematics, Mathematical Economics & Pomona College
  \end{tabular}
  \vspace*{0.25em}

  \section{Research}
  \begin{compactitem}\parskip = 0cm
    \item My current interests involve applications of text analysis and natural language processing in macroeconomics, particularly in central bank communication and expectations formation.
    %% Uncomment the following line to display the total value of publications, submissions, and so on that are included in the
    %% calculation of sumpapers (see .sty file for definition).
    % \item I have authored or co-authored \numberstringnum{\getrefnumber{sumpapers}} publications on economic topics. A list of these appear below.
  \end{compactitem}
  \vspace*{0.25em}

  \section{Dissertation}
  \begin{compactitem}\parskip = 0cm
    \item Committee: Olivier Coibion (Co-Supervisor), Christoph Boehm (Co-Supervisor), Saroj Bhattarai, and Amy Handlan (Brown University)
  \end{compactitem}
  \vspace*{0.25em}

  %% Adding working papers, works in progress, and publications .bib files
  %% You can include \printbib outside of the publications environment. They just won't be counted towards sumpapers (see .sty file for
  %% definition)
  \begin{publications}
    \printbib{wps}
    \printbib{wips}
  \end{publications}
  \vspace*{-0.75em}

  \section{Honours and awards}
  ~\begin{tabular}{lll}
    2020 - & \textbf{Graduate Teaching Fellowship} & University of Texas at Austin\\
    2017 & \textbf{Distinction in Economics Senior Exercise} & Pomona College\\
    2014 - 2015 & \textbf{Pomona College Scholar} & Pomona College
  \end{tabular}
  \vspace*{0.25em}

  \section{Teaching history}\label{sec:teaching_history}
  \begin{compactitem}\parskip = 0cm
    \item Since Fall 2020, student evaluations have given an average rating for my teaching of 4.25 out of 5.
    \item I earned an \href{https://ctl.utexas.edu/teaching-preparation-series}{Advanced Teaching Preparation Certificate} in 2023 from the University of Texas at Austin.
  \end{compactitem}
  \vspace*{0.70em}
  ~\begin{tabular}{p{2.3cm} p{2.4cm} p{2.8cm} p{6.6cm}}
    University of \newline Texas at Austin & Fall 2024 & Assistant Instructor & \textbf{ECO304L: Introduction to \newline Macroeconomics}\\
    & Spring 2024 & Teaching Assistant \newline (Prof. Mueller) & \textbf{ECO395L: Macro and the Labor Market \newline (MA course)}\\
    & & Teaching Assistant \newline (Prof. Oettinger) & \textbf{ECO395K: Labor Economics (MA course)}\\
    & Fall 2021 - 2023 & Teaching Assistant \newline (Profs. Acchiardo, \newline Geerling, Mateer) & \textbf{ECO304K: Introduction to Microeconomics \newline (Synchronous Massive Online Course for \newline fall)}\\
    & Summer 2022 & Teaching Assistant \newline (Prof. Schneider) & \textbf{ECO325K: Health Economics}\\
    & Fall 2020, \newline Spring 2021 & Teaching Assistant \newline (Profs. Sadler, \newline Acchiardo) & \textbf{ECO304L: Introduction to \newline Macroeconomics}
  \end{tabular}
  \vspace*{0.25em}

  \section{Employment history}
  \begin{compactitem}\parskip = 0cm
    \item Please see the {\hypersetup{linkcolor = black}\hyperref[sec:teaching_history]{``Teaching history''}} section for more details about my teaching experience.
  \end{compactitem}
  \vspace*{0.70em}
  ~\begin{tabular}{lll}
    2024 - & \textbf{Assistant Instructor} & University of Texas at Austin\\
    2020 - 2024 & \textbf{Teaching Assistant} & University of Texas at Austin\\
    2018 - 2020 & \textbf{Senior Research Assistant} & Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System\\
    2017 - 2018 & \textbf{Research Assistant} & Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
  \end{tabular}
  \vspace*{0.25em}
      
  \section{Grants}
  ~\begin{tabular}{llll}
    2024 & \textbf{PhD Summer Research Fellowship} & University of Texas at Austin, & \$5,000\\
    2023 & \textbf{PhD Summer Research Fellowship} & University of Texas at Austin, & \$3,000\\
    2016 & \textbf{Harry G. Steele Scholarship} & Pomona College & \$4,000\\
    2013 & \textbf{Flextronics Texas Scholarship} & Pomona College & \$1,000
  \end{tabular}
  \vspace*{0.25em}
    
  \section{Miscellaneous information}
  \begin{compactitem}\parskip = 0cm
    \item \textbf{Programming:} Matlab, Python, Bash, SAS, \href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAME_(database)}{FAME}, (P)SQL, R, Stata, EViews, \LaTeX
    \item \textbf{Front-end Development:} Vanilla HTML, CSS, JS, Jekyll
    \item \textbf{Applications:} Visual Studio Code, Emacs, Git, Sublime Text, RStudio, Tableau, Microsoft Office
    \item \textbf{Operating Systems:} Unix, Linux, Windows
    \item \textbf{Languages:} Vietnamese (native), English (native)
  \end{compactitem}
\end{document}

\maketitle after \begin{document} inserts the header box into the LaTeX document. Afterwards, the rest of the .tex file outputs a typical LaTeX document with \section commands.
Sections that may have many columns with detailed information, such as “Teaching history” in my own CV, are structured as tabular environments with the columns specified as paragraphs. This configuration allows for flexible management of the column widths in order to prevent horizontal overflow and crashing into the margins.

To insert publications into the document, use the \begin{publications} environment.

Each \printbib command will insert a subsection that contains all publications in that category, in chronological and descending order, and sorted by name within each year.
- Sorting specifics can be modified within the biblatex package options in the .sty file.
The total number of publication items (e.g., refereed and working papers) listed inside the publications environment is calculated, converted into an integer, and displayed in the CV using the fmtcount package. The page numbers for the publications section are also stored inside of the \printbib command with the labels \label{pubitemsstart} and \label{pubitemsend}. These allow you to output them in the CV using the \pageref command. All of these configurations can be found inside of the .sty file.

You’re allowed to have \printbib commands outside the publications environment, but the associated .bib items will not be counted towards the total number of publications.

  %% Creating publications environment
  \newenvironment{publications}{
    %% Creating label for the beginning of the publications environment for \pageref usage
    \label{pubitemsstart}
    \vspace*{0cm}
    \titlespacing{\section}{0pt}{1.5ex}{1ex}\itemsep = 0.00cm
  }{
    %% Creating label for the end of the publications environment for \pageref usage
    \label{pubitemsend}
    \addtocounter{sumpapers}{-1}
    \refstepcounter{sumpapers}
    \label{sumpapers}
  }
  \def\printbib#1{
    \printbibliography[category = #1, heading = #1]\lastref{sumpapers}
  }

  %% Counting total number of items included in the publications environment
  %% Sumpapers will naturally count everything contained inside of the publications environment. However, if you include categories
  %% inside of the environment that you don't want to be included into the sumpapers value, the following comments provide guidance on
  %% how to adjust the variable to display the value you want. As a reminder, .bib items added after and outside of the publications
  %% environment do not get added into the total value of sumpapers.
  %% Initialising the counter for pubitems to be 0.
  \newcounter{pubitems}\setcounter{pubitems}{0}

  %% Initialising the counter for total value sumpapers to be 0.
  %% If you want to remove x publication items from being included in the total value of sumpapers, simply replace 0 with -x.
  \newcounter{sumpapers}\setcounter{sumpapers}{0}

  %% Defining sumpapers to be the sum of the sub-totals of pubitems in every category listed inside of the publications environment.
  \def\lastref#1{
    \addtocounter{#1}{
      \value{pubitems}
    }
    \setcounter{pubitems}{0}
  }

  %% Add all papers in the bib files
  \nocite{*}

Download

Feel free to take a look at the .tex file here, the .sty file here, my personal CV as an example, and the GitHub repo for the source code (also found by the buttons at the top of this website).

Closing note

If you want to find out more about me and my research, please visit my personal website. You can also find my research on my Google Scholar profile, my SSRN profile, my GitHub profile, and my ORCID (0009-0000-8559-7915).