You could have some sort of "degraded" resume version in .rtf. It seems like .rtf is decent, but doesn't have as much customization as a word document. Of course, I could be wrong. It's not the best solution, but it is something that can be passed around from person to person, edited, and even re-imported with much less fuss than trying to use a Word document.

However, any time someone does that, that's a part of the process that isn't taking place on JobSpice.

"However, any time someone does that, that's a part of the process that isn't taking place on JobSpice."

This is the real reason not to offer Word export. They can try to convince HR departments to use JobSpice for their resume filtering and searching needs, instead of just a place to download resumes into their internal systems and never returning to use other services.

A noble goal, but it seems very unlikely. Shifting Fortune 1000 companies or large recruiting firms to use a whole new system would be an amazingly unlikely and long-time framed change. Best of luck if that's your goal though, it would be an improvement.

Until then though, lack of Word export is a liability for people who build their resumes on your site.

I wonder if perhaps scripting Open Office could be doable? I have looked (briefly) into the Open Document standard (I think that was the name), but it seemed too painful to me. I have some faint hope that creating word documents via the Open Office scripting API could be easier.

That is, rather than trying to create valid XML, just call a method on an empty open office doc that say 'creteHeading("abc")'

And so on... Of course probably it won't work, but it is the only hope I see on the horizon. (My problem is actually going from LaTex to Word).

Agreed that the Word formatting engine is horrendous.

However, one thing you might want to do is just generate a "standard format" Word doc (without all the fancy layout/design/template). This way, those that really, really need a Word version (or think they do), will have it.