The Jakes Resume Template Is Good. Here Is the Catch.
The Jakes resume is a clean, single-column LaTeX template. It has one catch in the section headings that we measured. Here is the fix.
People search for the Jakes resume by name, and for good reason. It is a clean, single-column LaTeX template that most scanners read without complaint. But it has one catch, and it is a subtle one. The catch lives in the section headings, and you would never spot it on screen.
What the Jakes resume gets right
Start with why it is popular. It is one column, so a parser reads it top to bottom with no guessing. It has no photo, no tables, and no color. The typography is careful, and the spacing gives every section room to breathe. On structure alone, it is close to the plain, well-built page we recommend to everyone.
It also handles dates well. Each role has its title, its place, and its dates lined up so a parser can find them fast. Those three fields are the ones a scanner cares about most, and the template puts them where they are easy to grab.
That structure is not magic from LaTeX. You could build the same shape in Word or Google Docs and it would work just as well. The single column is the part doing the work, not the toolchain. If you have seen the Harvard resume format, this is a close cousin.
The catch is in the letter-spacing
The Jakes template sets its section headings in small caps with the letters spread apart. It looks sharp on screen and in the PDF you export. The trouble starts when a scanner pulls the text back out of that PDF.
We tested this across a whole catalogue of headings. Past a certain amount of spacing, one common text extractor stops seeing a word and starts seeing separate letters. A heading you meant as one word comes out as a row of singletons.
macOS
WORK EXPERIENCE
Linux
W O R K E X P E R I E N C E
0.6px
Methodpdftotext (poppler) on the rendered PDF, on Linux; tracking increased in 0.1px steps on 8pt uppercase headings, across the full template catalogue. The same file passed on macOS.
The strangest part is the last line of that method. The same file passed on a Mac and broke on Linux. That is the concrete answer to a question that drives people mad. It is why two different scanning sites can give your identical file two different scores. They are not disagreeing about your content. They are running different software on different machines.
This is not a flaw unique to LaTeX. Any tool that lets you stretch the space between letters can walk you into it. LaTeX just makes spread headings easy and tempting, so its users hit the wall more often than most.
How to keep the look without the risk
You do not have to abandon the design. You have to ease off the letter-spacing on the headings. Small caps are fine. Wide tracking on top of small caps is the part that tips a heading over the edge.
- Dial the letter-spacing on section headings down toward normal.
- Keep the small caps if you like them — they are not the problem on their own.
- Run your exported PDF through a plain text extractor and read what comes out.
The reason this works is simple. A parser groups letters into words partly by the gaps between them. Normal spacing tells it 'this is one word'. Wide spacing tells it 'these are separate things', and it believes you. That last step, reading your own PDF back as plain text, is the one people skip. It takes a minute and it is the only way to know for sure.
You can do that check yourself in under a minute. Open your exported PDF, select all the text, and paste it into a plain notes window. Now read your section headings. If you see WORK EXPERIENCE, you are fine. If you see a row of lonely letters, you have found your problem before a recruiter's software did. You want to be the one who catches it, not the machine that quietly drops you.
Whether the Jakes resume is worth it
For most people, yes, with the spacing fixed. The bones are right, and right bones are the hard part. If you are comfortable in LaTeX, keep using it and just watch the headings.
There is one more reason to be careful here. The people most drawn to this template are engineers, and engineering roles are exactly where an automated scan is most likely to sit between you and a human. The stakes on a clean parse are higher for you, not lower. None of this makes the Jakes resume a bad choice. It makes it a good choice with one setting to check.
If you are not comfortable in LaTeX, do not adopt it just for this. You are not getting anything a plain document cannot give you, and you are taking on a toolchain that fights you over small things. A single-column layout like the classic template gives you the same clean structure with none of the letter-spacing trap. The design that gets read is the one where nothing on the page is working against you.
More on resumes
Resume Summary Examples, and How to Write Your Own
The best resume summaries could only describe you. Here are three examples for different stages, and a simple way to write your own.
Your Resume in Spanish: What Changes, What Does Not
Writing your resume in Spanish is more than a translation. The word itself changes, and so do the conventions. The one rule that survives is the layout.
The Fitness Industry Resume: Certs, Results, Photos
A fitness industry resume lives on certifications and client results, not a glossy headshot. Here is what belongs on the page, and what the photo really costs.