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Comment by thom | Hacker News Reader

What’s the basis for this advice? Have you tested A/B tested it with your clients?

In fairness, A/B testing this approach would be ethically very iffy, particularly if they believe it makes a difference!

Nope. The results my clients get with my resumes are enough proof for me.

But you're sure that not using the first person is a big component of that?

We may have some kind of disconnect. The most common resume is written in "implied first person", and not "first person", so the "I" in most lines is implied. Examples:

Developed a web app in Python that ....

Authored a playbook for...

So it's still considered "first person" by most, but the pronoun is dropped.

Can I be sure that no using "I" on resumes is a "big component" for my success? Of course I can't be 100% sure, and my ability to highlight accomplishments is probably far more important.

But I was a recruiter for 20 years, and I know that 95% of resumes I saw during my career (easily in the tens of thousands) were written in implied first person, and when you send someone a resume that continuously uses "I" it is a bit of a shock to the system (just as it would be to see third person).

I'll tell you what, let's save us both some time. Go to Google and just search "resume", and use image search. I just went through the first page of results, and I didn't see a single resume written in first person (using "I"). Not one.

I know that lots of people who sell CV advice on the internet say this, I just find it such a bafflingly trivial piece of advice that it's strange to have strong feelings about it. Most CVs aren't written like this and I don't find myself marking them down for writing like a normal person. Maybe this is a US thing (although I have lots of US people's CVs to look at) but the idea that anyone would be shocked at seeing "I" in a CV is just nuts, and honestly, if someone filters on minutiae like that you wouldn't really want to work for them anyway.

I've written for at least a thousand international clients, hundreds in the UK, and this doesn't seem to be a US thing based on the resumes/CVs I see.

I'm not saying people are filtering on seeing "I", but they would be surprised in the same way they would be by seeing third person "Thom is a CTO with..." on a CV.

I have no agenda here. I'm just telling you the facts from someone who has probably read far more resumes than most others. You don't need to accept my expertise. Again, run a google image search on resumes, tell me how many you see with the word 'I'.

You clearly don't value my experience. That's OK. I'm not some advocate for first person pronouns - it doesn't help me in any way that resumes are written in this manner. I'm just explaining to you that it's a fact.

But you're not, you're explaining that it's a commonly held opinion. I'm just intrigued what the basis for that opinion is other that 'oh, everyone says to do that'. Maybe you're not curious about literally the number one piece of advice you give in your job, but I would be.

A search on Google of the words "resume first person" (without quotes) will help, with the first 10 answers pretty much unanimously agreeing with my belief. I've explained why in other responses (mostly redundancy - "I did this, I did that" gets old.

This isn't the #1 piece of advice I give in my job. I'm a writer. I write the documents. I'm not telling them what to do.

I do offer review services, which are a small part of my business. If I get a resume with the word "I" for a review, I will tell them what I've told you.

You seem intent on belittling what I do, as if my job is to walk around telling people "don't use I".

You're the one that led with that! If I were a professional internet comment writer, I'd have told you how obnoxious that was, but alas, I am merely an amateur.

Before sending off my CV I always spin around three times and say a prayer to Russel's Teapot. The results I get with this practice are enough proof for me.

Ok, it's not an extraordinary stretch to imagine that your form might help, but all you've actually demonstrated is that it's not catastrophically damaging!

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