Résumés in actual HTML are becoming commonplace on portfolio sites, but they often don’t get used to their full potential. An HTML version of your résumé is important because of its immediacy and updatability, but there is another important benefit: hypertext. That’s what makes the web awesome, right?
If someone isn’t familiar with the company you worked for, all you have to do is make that text a link and they can easily get more information. Why not link to your references’ websites so that an employer can find out more about them? In my résumé, I’ve even gone as far as to link to applications. Sure for Photoshop it might have been a little excessive (instead I drew the line at Word and Excel) but if someone isn’t familiar with Coda the link could be very helpful.
One challenge I’ve faced by adding links to my resume is that the styles applied to links can easily upset a hierarchy. To solve this problem, I’m trying out a less typical styling for links: these boxes. I don’t think they are perfected yet, but they allow the text itself to maintain its original styling and hopefully its place in the hierarchy.
Do you have any thoughts—for or against—linking in résumés? Or do have an interesting way of solving the challenge of styling links? I’d love to hear your reactions in the comments.
The Discussion
Hm… I think the shadow effect on the links actually make them ‘leap’ out of the page. Also, looking at your résumé, the links on the second line overlap the links on the line above, creating an odd effect indeed.
Removing the shadow would make the links not leap, but the text would still stand out. I guess that is one design problem that may never be solved (I’ve seen websites where the links look virtually the same as the rest of the text… that’s just wrong).
Linking in résumés is a good idea, particularly for the references, but those links under Skills might a be a bit much. I thought it was curious that you mixed human languages and computer languages — I had never seen that before (granted, I have never looked at a coder’s résumé). It brings a funny image of a person trying to speak in HTML. Shouldn’t one include English as one of one’s languages? I’m genuinely wondering, since I have always seen both English and Spanish listed as languages in résumés (I live in a Spanish-speaking country), though I can see how it may be redundant.
Hah yeah the style is definitely not perfect. I just couldn’t arrive at a solution that fit and forgot about it. But with your advice I will have to consider the problem again. (If I ever even find a solution…) Maybe I need a different style of links on the resume from the rest of the site (but that has its problems to).
That’s a good point about English! I have added it now. And I agree that the links under skills might be a bit too much. The only thing that keeps me from removing ‘em is that they draw attention to my skills hehe… not that that is a good enough excuse. One more thing for the to-do list!