What person should a CV be written in?

Implied first person: the conjugated verb, without writing «I». «Led a team of 50», not «I led» and not «Ana Ruiz led». The third person turns a CV into a biography and puts distance where you want closeness.

Is it correct to write a CV in the third person?

Not for a CV sent into a hiring process. The third person belongs to speaker biographies and corporate partner profiles. On a CV it reads as if somebody else wrote it for you.

Is «Management of sales teams» wrong instead of «Managed sales teams»?

Not grammatically wrong, but it is the weakest form. A sentence with no subject describes the post, not the person who held it: anyone sitting in that chair would have written the same line. The verb attributes the result to whoever signs the CV.

What is the difference between a resume and a European CV?

The Anglo-Saxon resume carries no photo, no date of birth and no personal details, with bullets that open on an action verb. The European CV allows a photo and tolerates the noun form inherited from Europass, which was built to compare qualifications across countries rather than to sell results.

Do applicant tracking systems care about grammatical person?

No. An automated filter reads keywords and structure; «Management» and «Managed» look the same to it. The person who decides on the strength of your writing is the human reading afterwards.

Which personal details should never appear on a CV?

Date of birth, identity card number, marital status, nationality and number of children. In Anglo-Saxon markets they create a discrimination risk for the employer, and nowhere do they help the decision.

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Your CV is not in the third person.
It has no person at all.

Almost nobody writes a CV in the third person. The common mistake is a different one, and it rarely gets named: writing it with no subject. «Management of sales strategy» never says who did the managing. This page covers the three registers, which market uses which, and what ZenitJob does about it.

The problem

Three registers, not two

Asking «first person or third?» assumes there are only two options. There are three, and the middle one is where nearly everybody sits.

Register	How it reads	What it says about you
Third person	«Ana Ruiz led a team of 50»	That is a speaker biography. It reads as though somebody else wrote it, and puts distance where you want closeness.
No person (noun form)	«Management of a team of 50»	It describes the post, not the person who held it. Anyone sitting in that chair would have written the same line.
First person (implied)	«Led a team of 50»	It attributes the result to whoever signs the CV. That is the one thing a competitor cannot copy.

«Management» there is a noun, not a verb. It is the management, like the leadership or the coordination. In English the pronoun is dropped and the verb carries the subject, which is why it is called implied — and why «first person» does not mean talking about yourself. It means owning what you did.

What is genuinely debated

Resume or European CV

The real argument between schools is not «first or third person»: it is verb or noun, and it comes from the two formats having been built for different jobs.

Anglo-Saxon (resume)

No photo. In the United States it is a discrimination risk for the employer.
No date of birth, no marital status, no nationality.
Bullets that open on a verb. Unanimous across university careers guides.
One or two pages. No «Personal details» block.

European (Europass and its descendants)

Photo accepted and common in Spain, Germany and Italy.
Noun form tolerated: «Responsible for…», «Management of…».
Up to two pages for a senior profile.
Built to compare qualifications across EU countries.

And here is the point that rarely gets said out loud: the noun form is not «wrong», it was designed for something else. Europass began as an administrative form for comparing qualifications between countries, not for selling results. That is why it describes duties.

Both live side by side in continental Europe, but they have split by seniority: administrative and junior CVs stay in the noun form, while executive search has spent twenty years asking for verbs and outcomes. A headhunter reading a director-level CV is not looking for what the job description said. They are looking for what changed while you were there.

The rule, in one line: one first-person verb, one number and one timeframe in every achievement. Noun form only in the headline summary and in the labels (education, languages, skills).

It holds for both formats. Choosing «European» changes the photo and the personal details — never how an achievement is written.

Common questions

Questions about person and format

Can I write «I» on my CV?

You do not need it and it reads worse. «Negotiated» already says who negotiated. It is the one rule every guide agrees on, in English and in Spanish alike.

Should the headline summary be in the first person too?

There the noun form is correct and usual: «Commercial director with more than 25 years in retail and eCommerce». What must not happen is mixing inside the achievement list: some bullets on «Led» and others on «Leadership of» read like two CVs stapled together.

Do applicant tracking systems penalise the noun form?

No. An automated filter reads keywords and structure; «Management» and «Managed» look identical to it. The one who decides on your writing is the human reading afterwards. So this is not technical compliance: it is persuasion, which makes it matter more, not less.

Photo or no photo?

It depends on the market, not on taste. In Spain, Germany or Italy it is common and does no harm. For the United States, United Kingdom, Canada or Ireland, take it off: it creates a discrimination risk for the employer, and some companies bin the CV for that alone. When in doubt, remove it — in no market does the absence of a photo count against you.

Which personal details are always surplus?

Date of birth, identity card number, marital status, nationality and number of children. They add nothing to the decision and in Anglo-Saxon markets they are an outright problem. ZenitJob never asks for any of them: those fields do not exist in the application.

How many pages should it be?

The CV you send: two at most for a senior profile. But two things are worth separating, and almost nobody separates them. Your master CV — where everything you have ever done is kept — can and should be long, because it is your archive, not what you send. What you send is a selection focused on the function of the post.

What if my sector writes in the noun form?

Check whether that is your sector or simply the habit of the templates going around. The noun form dominates in public administration and junior profiles; in private executive selection it does not. And if you still prefer it, the half that is not up for debate still stands: the number. «Management of a team of 50» at least says how many.

In practice

How ZenitJob applies this

ZenitJob checks every achievement against both halves of the rule and tells you which one is missing: the number, the verb, or both. It does not rewrite your sentence behind your back — it asks you what is missing and hands you a draft you can correct before accepting it.

And it never invents a number. If you do not answer, there is no figure: the facts of your career belong to you, and putting a plausible number on screen is an invitation to copy it onto the CV.

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Your CV is not in the third person.It has no person at all.