C.V - First or Third person?

Definitely first person, If I read a CV in third person I would just assume the person who wrote it was on drugs at the time or just plain crazy. But then it would make you stand out, but probably for the wrong reasons.
 
3rd person, changed from 1st after I did my GCSE's and got off the paper round :p 3rd is much more professional and is easier to write, however Maccapacca doesn't think he'd wouldn't interview someone who wrote in either.
 
How does 3rd person make it more professional ? I really don't understand it. It makes you seem illiterate in my opinion. Your CV is about you personally therefore it is about your qualifications your experiences. Not someone else's so unless you are getting somebody else to write if for you there is absolutely no reason why you should write in the 3rd person.
 
Go the whole hog - use 'one' rather than I, sounds so much better...

"After one graduated from oxbridge, one undertook a year out teaching underprivileged children in Africa how to read and write. One gained so much personal insight into the hardships faced by our foreign brethren from this..."

:)
 
Wej said:
Go the whole hog - use 'one' rather than I, sounds so much better...

"After one graduated from oxbridge, one undertook a year out teaching underprivileged children in Africa how to read and write. One gained so much personal insight into the hardships faced by our foreign brethren from this..."

:)
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Yep, it'll look really clever when you miss the point of the word "one" and misuse it ;)
 
I think statements appear more professional than sentences. If you're an employer, do you really want to read "I worked at blah where I was responsible for blah and introduced blah" potentially 20 times when you could read "Workplace - Responsible for blah, introduced blah". This also makes first or third person fairly irrelevant.

In fact, I'm not sure when you originally said third person whether you really meant, "He was in charge of ...." which is third person, or just "In charge of..." which could be either.
 
Do any of you work in recruitment or a posistion where you personaly call interviewees? Otherwise no disrespect your opinion is worth nothing.

I guess different industrys may prefer different styles~?

What are your opinions... Ive got mine in third person and never had problems with it?
 
As a serious reply... I've always used it 'person-free' as the previous poster said

* In charge of xxxx
* Trained for x years in yyyyy

You don't need to use 'I' or 'He'/'She' at all if you write it like this
 
Efour2 said:
Do any of you work in recruitment or a posistion where you personaly call interviewees? Otherwise no disrespect your opinion is worth nothing.

I guess different industrys may prefer different styles~?

What are your opinions... Ive got mine in third person and never had problems with it?
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I ran the selection process for my replacement. No one who applied (about 50 people) used 3rd person, it would stand out if they did, but then I would probably have dumped the CV, to me writing in the 3rd person makes it seem like you don't know how to write as CV. But that is just my opinion. Other people obviously see it differently.

On a different matter, if your applying for a particular type of job, try and add it into your personal interests, I hired for IT support, the number of people who don't list any form of IT as an interest is staggering.
 
Efour2 said:
Do any of you work in recruitment or a posistion where you personaly call interviewees? Otherwise no disrespect your opinion is worth nothing.

I guess different industrys may prefer different styles~?

What are your opinions... Ive got mine in third person and never had problems with it?
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I have been "trained" at work to interview potential people to hire. But this is aimed at technical trainees we take on for an advanced apprenticeship. But I have nothing to do with the sifting of applicates I just interview them find out their experiences and why they want to join etc.
 
When you are applying for jobs, 1st person makes most sense when it comes to a personal statement usually rest of the CV would be impersonal/third person i.e. managed x from y to z,

All CVs at the last few places I worked are totally third person or impersonal tense for both internal and client distribution as they will usually be part of the project team or bidding team and effectively distributed on the companies behalf even if you are doing the distributing.
 
Been told when I was one my latest round of job hunting/cv writing to use third person.

Didn't seem to do any harm tbh.
 
it does not matter either way. As an employer, i'm more interested in your skills, and experience than whether or no the cv is written in the first or third person.

Seriously i have more important things to be doing than worrying about it.
 
mangobreeder said:
it does not matter either way. As an employer, i'm more interested in your skills, and experience than whether or no the cv is written in the first or third person.

Seriously i have more important things to be doing than worrying about it.
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But when you receive 300-500 CVs for a role you need to have a quick (likely superficial) method of narrowing them down ;)
 
I wqasnt havign a go at anyone. Just wanted to hear some opinions that matter.

I guess at the end of the day its going to be their personal choice and how much they weigh it compared to actualy qualifications and experaince...
 
In fact havinga quick look at my CV I layed it out as such:

Name Address etc..

Previous work experience:

Job title
Company
3-4 bullet points of what I did in that role. Very short bullet points. Most of these are statements rather than sentences.

Other information:
Again very short bullet points of projects I worked on. Various roles. Work background. About 8-9 bullet points

Qualifications:

Table with list of qualifications and when they were achieved

References:

Two references

All in all my CV is two pages long.
 
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