Is it advisable to have many clickable hyperlinks in an academic CV?

Question

I have recently been updating my academic CV. I realise that some items are not as internationally recognised as to that every reader will be aware of their importance without googling them. Hence, I am thinking about inserting hyperlinks to those items lest the reader wish to learn more.

Now, many items on my CV are clickable, and a reader particularly interested in one item may now just click on it to see a webpage with more details to pop up.

However, I rarely see a CV with many hyperlinks behind those words/phrases. Is this a taboo, or I am OK to do so?

Answer 1

I agree: most academic CVs do not have a festival of hyperlinks. I don't see a problem with it, unless -- as @Taladris says -- the large amount of hyperlinking creates clutter in the document. For something like a CV, where the spacing on the page is highly adjustable, I would think that you could probably have even a highly hyperlinked CV and take a little care to make sure that it does not look too busy to the eye.

I can tell you though why I don't feel the need to hyperlink my CV (and I imagine the reason holds more generally). It's simple: I also have a webpage, and anything which appears on my CV which could get linked to also appears on my webpage. Further, the translation between the two is straightforward: I have a section of my CV listing papers, and I also have an immediately visible link to a subpage containing papers from my main webpage (which, as you can see, is no frills to say the least, but it seems to get the job done).

Although I am certainly no expert on the visual display of information, webpage design (you'll know that immediately if you clicked on the above link) or anything like that, it is my opinion that a webpage is a more natural medium to have clickable content than a CV.

I think every young academic should have a professional webpage. If they do have one, I'm not sure that a heavily hyperlinked CV is necessary, although again I see no harm in it.

Answer 2

General advise would be, yes, include links but do not rely on them for key information. You do not necessarily know if the recipients read the electronic version or a printout. If it is a printout, it is very unlikely that people will key in URLs to look up information, unless they are interested. In for, example a job application, your application may be one of a large number and there may not be time to spend on looking up information that should have been included directly in the first place. Remember it is you responsibility to yourself to provide everything the reader of the CV may want, not the other way around.

So although, there is no problem with including links, think twice about what information you link to and what you actually put in your CV.

Answer 3

As long as it does not reduce readability, I don't see any reason for not including hyperlinks.

Readability is of course about format. As a personal preference, I would not like to read a document where all words are in blue and underlined, or equation numbers in a red square. So you have to find a way to make the links discreet (but still easily noticeable by the reader).

Readability is also, and mainly, about the content. Be sure your content is still clear when your CV is printed (or in case links are broken). Also, try to keep links meaningful. In particular, keep all your links high-quality: if links to your publications or to the diploma system of your home country will help for your evaluation, you would ruin all your effect if these links are "drowned" in a sea of meaningless links.

Did you consider about tool-tips instead of some links? It will still provide some information, but with the drawback of having to load a new page.

Answer 4

Another option is to keep most (if not all) hyper-links the same font and colour as the rest of the text. Most PDF readers change the cursor icon when hovering over a hyperlink, so if the reader expects something to be a hyper-link (such as an email address or DOI), they should easily discover that it is indeed a link.

It will not be so obvious that some less crucial links exist, but for the eagle-eyed viewer they are there. For those who are just quickly scanning the document, the links won't introduce distracting clutter.

Answer 5

Include hyperlinks for things that can't be Googled, or examples of your actual work.

Links to general information aren't helpful and clutter links to the real meat of your work. The odds of someone clicking a link on your resume are slim, so make it count if they do.

Unless you are a graphic designer, no competent hiring manager cares about the design or colors of your CV.

After some research on this and having interviewed dozens of candidates, that's what I came up with :-)

Answer 6

You can include hyperlinks. But make sure that it does not affect readability and do not assume that the reader will click on the hyperlinks. The reason is that often some recruitment committee will just print out your CV to discuss about it. Moreover, some persons may just not want to click on hyperlinks if there are many.

Answer 7

I would advise against including any hyperlinks in your CV. There is very good chance that your CV will be printed out for consideration and it is at this point that you need to have your CV shine so you should design your CV to be read on paper rather than on screen. Hyperlinks, by necessity, will want to be formatted differently from the surrounding text but this will look odd in a printout where the links are non-functional and add no benefit.