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Ask HN: How do I make sense of this counter-intuitive resume/CV advice?
1 point by Fr0styMatt on May 23, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment
I currently feel like I'm stuck in the CV-advice-from-hell-hamster-wheel and need some perspective from the tech community, if for nothing else than to save my sanity :)

One piece of resume advice that I see often repeated is "Don't use personal pronouns in resumes". Yet for the life of me I can't understand how this rule came about and nobody seems to be able to give a clear explanation beyond "it's unprofessional". Okay, but why?

Any hiring managers want to chime in on this? If you've seen such an offending resume, what exactly was your thought process? If you ever rejected a resume because of the word 'I', why so? What impression did it give you of the resume?

Besides that, what resume advice do you see floating out there that you actually feel is good? What about advice that is out there that's outdated? Coming from a small company / start-up hiring manager's perspective? I'd love to hear some thoughts.



I like the advice proffered by Ask The Headhunter: http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/habuildvalue.htm and Liz Ryan: (pdf) http://www.humanworkplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Wha... myself.

Note I am a hiring manager for a small tech team outside the startup space.




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