How To Use 'I' In Your Resume

If you were raised the way I was, you are very good at following rules. You know how to stand on line and how to be quiet when the teacher is talking. You know better than to throw paper airlines in class. You get an "A" with a smiley face on every paper and piece of homework you hand in.

That approach is perfect for school. It's horrible on a job search, or in many other situations that arise in the grown-up world of work. If you're job-hunting, you've already learned through harsh experience that following the prescribed job-search rules leads to frustration and no job.

Here are the standard job-search rules:

1. Create a traditional resume full of jargon and buzzwords like "Results-oriented professional with a bottom-line orientation" and "Meets or exceeds expectations."
2. Use sentence fragments like "Skilled at leading cross-functional teams" in your resume, but never use the word "I"!
3. Apply for jobs using automated recruiting portals -- the ones I call Black Holes, because they suck your resume into a wormhole like real Black Holes in space.
4. Wait to hear something from the employer whose job opening you applied for.
5. Get old and die.

We have to break these rules and nearly every other piece of conventional job-search wisdom to get a job in the new-millennium job market. We are all learning to break rules. You should try it!

We'll start with your resume. Of course you can use "I" in your resume -- it's a branding document for you! It's your marketing brochure. I can't imagine a better place to use the word "I" than in your resume, but the standard job-search advice says don't do it.

That's very bad advice.

You'll use "I" in three ways in your Human-Voiced Resume. Your resume will have a friendly, conversational tone as though you were speaking to your hiring manager directly.

If you want to pitch resumes into Black Hole recruiting sites, you can do it, but a Human-Voiced Resume was invented to be sent directly to hiring managers, one at a time. You'll send your Human-Voiced Resume through the post, in an envelope, straight to your hiring manager's desk.

The first place to use "I" in your Human-Voiced Resume comes right at the top of the document. You'll use "I" in the Summary paragraph that immediately follows the contact information at the top of your resume.

Here's an example -- the Summary paragraph from Christine's Human-Voiced Resume:

I taught myself Facebook promotion as the VP of Programs for Gamma Phi Beta sorority during college. I built our chapter's FB page to capture 100K Likes and sold $32K of teeshirts during the school year. Now I'm a Social Media Marketing specialist whose passion is building buzz around a brand and converting fans to clients. I'm looking for my next adventure.

Christine is job-hunting, and she's picky. She has every reason to be, because she did a tremendous job at her first two jobs after college and has terrific references. Christine doesn't need to make millions of dollars in her next job or have an ocean view from her desk, but she needs to work for a manager who 'gets' her.

Christine's Summary paragraph makes it clear that she isn't one of the millions of standard, drone-type job applicants whose resumes her next manager will see.

If the manager reading Christine's Human-Voiced Resume at any particular moment doesn't care for the conversational tone in it, Christine hopes that the manager tosses her resume in the rubbish bin.

She doesn't have time to waste in her job search. She doesn't have time to spend with people who don't want to know the real Christine, the person behind the resume.

The human voice in Christine's resume sets her apart from more traditional, zombie-fied job candidates, and it also helps Christine decide which managers will be a good match for her very human working style.

You'll use "I" in the body of your resume, too, in two ways. You'll use "I" as you frame each role that you've held in your career so far. You'll also use "I" in your short bullets describing your accomplishments in each job. We call these mini-stories Dragon-Slaying Stories.

Acme Explosives, Phoenix, Arizona

Social Media Marketing Manager

2004 - 2011

Acme is the world's second-largest maker of stick dynamite with $20M in annual revenues. I was recruited to Acme by its CMO, Mel Blanc, who heard me speak at a conference. My mission was to grow awareness of our brand and generate sales leads.

•  To launch Acme's social presence, I created an interactive quiz that generated 450K new visits to our site in two weeks and $2M in new-customer sales over the next six months
• When we acquired Wile E. Products in 2006, I integrated the two brands' social media activities and launched a Youtube how-to channel that has 100K followers
• As Acme gained regulatory approval to ship unassembled stick dynamite by mail, I created an awareness campaign that led to $750K in ecommerce orders in one year

Christine uses the word "I" appropriately and without hesitation throughout her Human-Voiced Resume, careful to avoid stacking "I"s atop one another or to suggest that she ran Acme Explosives by herself, with no assistance!

Christine wants hiring managers to know that she loves a challenge and will dive in to solve big problems at work. She wants a hiring manager to know that she's ready to start working and make a difference, but only for a manager who is excited about the match-up between his or her needs and Christine's talents. There are plenty of managers in pain out in the business ecosystem. Christine only needs to find one of them.

Are you ready to go find hiring managers in pain, yourself? Start by putting a human voice in your resume. The word "I" in your own branding document is about as human as you can get. If you're new to rule-breaking, adding "I" to your resume is a wonderful first step!