Hi,

I'm just updating my CV and up until now have embedded hyperlinks which, when clicked, link through to press articles and coverage which support claims in my CV. These are directly relevant, as they refer to me by name. I included them originally as they are a useful way of providing more detail if needed. They also help substantiate the CV.

Anyone have any thoughts on whether this approach is good or a bad here in Switzerland ?

Patrious

I personally would only do it if you can format your CV as a PDF (some companies only accept Word, so I do not mean "you are able to make a PDF" but "you are allowed to hand in a PDF"):

I have seen how my Word formatted CVs have been screwed up by
- headhunters who put the info into their agencies corporate design regardless if my current layout did fit their template or not
- HR staff who copy/pasted my texts into some corporate templates
- Application management IT systems that were implemented so badly that they did "funny things" with some Word documents.

In all three cases you have a good chance that a link would be broken and I personally think that a broken link would be worse than no link... so only if you can make sure that the CV will look like the way you made it (for example when you email it directly to the person who reviews it), I would give it a try...

Unless you have checked in advance and are absolutely certain that this is OK, I wouldn't bother. I guess that it may become more accepted in future.

Expand on the points briefly in your CV and keep the details for an interview. I doubt if any HR people are likely to go searching around for back up details.

If it is printed out, it would be wasted anyway. This could go against you as they would know there is more detail but they cannot see it.

I've written extensively in my field over the years, so there are plenty of hyper-links in my CV.

However, I am concious of when my CV is not in PDF format, especially with recruitment consultants, many of whom tend to cut and paste and make a mess of things. So what I do is keep the hyper-links separate, and simply keep them as footnotes, which should in theory limit whatever pig's ear of a mess that a recruitment agent may make of them.

A separate option, that I have considered, is to compile links to books on Amazon or copies of articles written in a separate document, as one does with references and qualifications.

I would agree that very few will actually click on the links - they're a bit like references or qualifications, in that you have presented evidence you are willing to stand over and much of the time they are happy enough with that and won't actually verify them. So in that respect, they're a good thing.