Do you put hyperlinks in your resumé?

September 2, 2010 10:59 AM

Should a resumé have hyperlinks in it, or is that frowned upon?

I'm getting conflicting information on this, so I thought I'd throw it out there. For what it's worth, this is for jobs relating to online educational products, and the links would be to projects I've been involved in. They could be very easily googled by anyone interested in taking a look at them, but is it better to include a hyperlink in the document itself? I usually send resumés out as PDFs.

posted by agent99 to Work & Money (9 answers total)

Hyperlinks aren't used too often in PDFs, so the most you'll be risking is people not noticing and not clicking on them. And of course, when the PDFs are printed out, the links are useless. To let people with hard copies of the resume also visit the links, you could make a small landing page with a short URL somewhere containing the links, and then put that short URL on the resume.
posted by zsazsa at 11:08 AM on September 2, 2010

I would estimate that at least 98.4% of emailed resumes are immediately printed out.

The remaining 1.6% are read by people who probably don't realize that you can click on things in a PDF to make it go.

So include the URL if you want, and if it fits. But be sure to make it a linked URL like http://ask.metafilter.com/163976/Do-you-put-hyperlinks-in-your-resum and not just a linked set of words.
posted by ErikaB at 11:19 AM on September 2, 2010 [2 favorites]

Unless you were really a main mover in the software, no. Link only to pages that tell them something about your work.
posted by Ironmouth at 11:20 AM on September 2, 2010

Almost all of my work has been on the web, so I link to relevant URLs wherever appropriate in my resumé. I think you should go ahead and do it.
posted by jacquilinala at 11:20 AM on September 2, 2010

"You can find samples of my work at agent99.com/samples."
posted by gum at 11:24 AM on September 2, 2010 [3 favorites]

I would suggest having one place online with a simple URL that has all your other links, and list this URL on the top of your resume with your contact information. And then list the individual URLs with relevant projects on your resume. But don't many any of them hyperlinks in the PDF. If someone is reading it on a computer, it's easy enough to copy and paste the URL into a browser.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:30 AM on September 2, 2010 [4 favorites]

Don't include a hyperlink in the PDF; not many people are used to that. Just include the URL.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:53 AM on September 2, 2010

As someone who has read more resumes than I ever wanted to, I would say include the URL but not the link. I'm only going to check you out if have otherwise gotten my attention, and if you have, I'll happily cut and paste the URL. If you haven't, it's just going to be ignored, or even annoying if it pops up when I'm running the mouse over the page.

PS - I would disagree with the comment that 98% of resumes are printed out. I only print out the 2% that I've decided on interviewing - why have reams of wasted paper sitting around if I don't need to?
posted by scrute at 4:14 PM on September 2, 2010

Consider also that resumes may be pushed through various tools - or live idiots in HR - that might hinky the links or edit your PDF for some crazy reason.

If you want to include URLs, show them. Use the bluedaisy method.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 3:03 PM on September 3, 2010