CV written in the 3rd person - thoughts?

[Some Gump]

If I saw a CV in the third person, I'd assume that as a minimum the candidate liked red dwarf a bit too much, and more likely was a full on 4chan autist.

[bqf]

Anyone who writes or talks about themselves in the 3rd person is usually mad as ten bears. See:

Louis Van Gaal
Jose Mourinho
Donald Trump

That's what BQF's views are.

[Utterpiffle]

UtterPiffle has enjoyed reading the comments made on this thread. He thanks you for your input.
The CV is currently being changed to the first person - but not without the CV company trying their best to put a convincing argument against the idea.

It's been a fun exercise though...

[aka_kerrly]

bqf said:

Anyone who writes or talks about themselves in the 3rd person is usually mad as ten bears. See:

Louis Van Gaal
Jose Mourinho
Donald Trump

That's what BQF's views are.

You forgot Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

I'm not a fan of this third person CV format either, although Its sometimes difficult to avoid too much "I can do xyz, I am good at abc I this that and other etc"

[DoubleSix]

Exactly, it’s not a love letter....

It’s supposed to be picked up and read by someone who doesn’t know you from Adam. And perhaps multiple people in different depts. It is in effect your representative in absentia, hence the third person narrative.

Your covering letter is the opportunity to communicate directly to the reader in first person and demonstrate your wider written communication skills.

[JuniorD]

3rd person might be appropriate if the recipient is unable or too important to read and employs someone to read it out to them.

</barrel scraped>

[Z4MCSL]

I would say its more about having a good recruiter you trust who can sell you into a business and act as an intermediary reference point. If you have a valuable skillset for the role you are applying for then you wont win or lose based on the formatting. Third person is usually how recruiters will do it and largely this allows a bit of distancing to be made between you and the CV. thereby any mistakes/issues/inconsistencies can be claimed by the recruiter who can fall on their sword and protect the impression you are making on the employer.

[eliot]

I read a linkedin profile in the 3rd person the other day - didn’t seem right.

[Z4MCSL]

I would also say, unless the employer is a fairly small business and has not undertaken much hiring I would be absolutely amazed if the employer was not completely used to dealing with 3rd person CVs.

another point to mention is that even if you do first person, if you are writing "I" a lot you are probably being convoluted on explaining your experience

[bristolbaron]

BristolBaron would like to tell you of the time he received a CV including a keyring photo of the applicant. She was not worthy of an interview or keyring photo.

Edited by bristolbaron on Monday 23 October 16:28

[rog007]

Z4MCSL said:

I would also say, unless the employer is a fairly small business and has not undertaken much hiring I would be absolutely amazed if the employer was not completely used to dealing with 3rd person CVs.

another point to mention is that even if you do first person, if you are writing "I" a lot you are probably being convoluted on explaining your experience

Agreed!

Whilst there’s no BSI/ISO for CVs, I always, unless there’s direct intelligence to suggest otherwise, produce CVs written in the third person to mainly reduce word count as alluded to above.

Too many CVs I see are a wall of impenetrable text, and this is one of a number of ways of reducing the word count.

I do however commend that, should one be needed, covering letters are written in the first person.