Writing IT Resumes with Word 2010 Part 6: Hyperlinks

Resume Writing for IT Professionals

A note from the author: Over the past year, this series of resume writing articles has focused mostly on resumes from a large-scale perspective, taking a conceptual rather than how-to approach. For this series, though, we deal with step-by-step technical matters that will simplify your resume writing process. This article, and others in the series, assumes that you’re using MS Word 2010. We hope you find it useful.

Adding a hyperlink (an image or section of text that directs the reader away from their original location and towards a new section of the document, new document, or new electronic location such as a website) is actually a very easy thing to do in MS Word 2010. Whether you should do it, however, is another matter entirely. Here is how adding a hyperlink can be accomplished, and some circumstances where one might be a useful addition to your resume.

DIRECTIONS FOR ADDING A HYPERLINK TO A WEBSITE

1. Highlight the text to which you would like to add a hyperlink.
2. Right-click on the Hyperlink icon in the MS Word ribbon, which can be found in the Links section on the Insert tab. This will bring up the Insert Hyperlink dialogue box.
   
3. Verify that your chosen text appears in the “Text to Display” field of the dialogue box.
4. Type the desired website address in the Address field of the Insert Hyperlink dialogue box. You can also copy and paste this address from another location, like a web browser.
5. Right-click on the “OK” command in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

There are several occasions where you might want to include a hyperlink to a website. You might want to include your linkedin profile or personal website, for example, or a portfolio containing examples of your materials. If you’ve ever done any web design, you will almost certainly be including links to examples of your best work. For that matter, you might include links to anywhere else you’ve been in the public eye, like published articles.

I’d be cautious of overusing hyperlinks, however. Some candidates will include links to the websites of schools they attended or companies where they’ve worked. This is risky because (a) the content you’re actually linking to is outside of your control and (b) such links compel a prospective employer to stop thinking about you as a candidate, and begin thinking about whatever content you’ve set up as a link. A hyperlink is like an interruption, so you want to be sure that you’re steering the content towards something that will be productive.

DIRECTIONS FOR ADDING AN EMAIL HYPERLINK

If you want to make things easier on your hopefully future employer, you can also insert an email hyperlink by using the following steps.

1. Highlight the text to which you would like to add an email hyperlink.
2. Right-click on the Hyperlink icon in the MS Word ribbon, which can be found in the Links section on the Insert tab. This will bring up the Insert Hyperlink dialogue box.
3. Verify that your chosen text appears in the “Text to Display” field of the dialogue box.
4. Select “email address” in the Link To field of the dialogue box. This will change the input field slightly.
5. Type the desired website address in the Email Address field of the Insert Hyperlink dialogue box. You can also copy and paste this address from another location.
6. Right-click on the “OK” command in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

Your text will now be configured as an email hyperlink, which when clicked will open as a send to email using your reader’s preferred email program.

For the record, you can also pull up the hyperlink dialogue box using the keyboard shortcut CTRL + K.  Of course, MS Word, in its inescapable attempts to be helpful, will convert any text it recognizes as an email into a hyperlink automatically. Which brings us to the next point:

DIRECTIONS FOR REMOVING HYPERLINKS

If you’re preparing a resume that will be printed out, instead of read electronically, you’ll want to remove the hyperlinks. Hyperlink font is blue by default, which looks distracting and garish when printed. Worse, if you print the resume using black and white settings you run the risk of it not showing up at all, or being translating into hard to read greyscale. Fortunately, removing a hyperlink is easy.

1. Right click on the hyperlink. This will pull up a sidebar interface with a number of options.
2. Select Remove Hyperlink.

After that, you’re pretty much done. The hyperlink will be removed. The above steps work for either email or website hyperlinks.

If you’re savvy about how you manage the feature, hyperlinks can be an excellent addition to your resume. Or, in the case of printed resumes, an equally excellent subtraction.

The seventh and final blog in our Word 2010 Resume series will appear next Friday, and will cover some of the finishing touches when making your resume, including removing track changes and comments, verifying authorship in file properties, and saving in the proper format.

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