What Is Active and Passive Voice?

Considering passive and active voice is essential when writing your job application. Knowing the difference puts you at the centre of the story you tell in your documents — taking the guesswork out of the recruiter's hands.

Wait, but what is active and passive voice?

There's often confusion about what "active voice" actually means. When people refer to it, they usually mean one of two distinct things — and most of the time when someone tells you your writing is "too passive," they mean the second.

The first kind — active and passive voice in grammar

In grammatical terms, the active voice is when the subject of the sentence performs an action. In the passive, the subject is the recipient of the action.

It's not that one is correct and one is incorrect — both have legitimate uses, even in business English. Passive voice is the right choice when the action matters more than who performed it ("the policy was approved on Friday"), or when you genuinely don't know who did something ("the file was deleted overnight").

The first kind — in your application

For resumes and applications, the active voice is generally better. It puts you at the centre of your sentence and usually takes fewer words. Consider:

The active version is shorter, clearer, and puts the candidate at the centre of the sentence. For most resume content, that's the right choice — the panel is reading to find out what you did, so the verb should attach directly to "I."

The second kind — a passive narrative

This is usually what people mean when they say your writing is too passive. Most of the time, they don't mean the technical grammar of your sentences is throwing them off. They mean the writing isn't having the impact it should.

Passive narrative means the phrasing is too soft. Consider these examples:

• "I ensured that I was able to demonstrate customer service."
• "I was responsible for providing customer service."

These sentences are active grammatically — "I" is the subject, "ensured" and "was responsible" are the verbs. But they're passive narratively. The first sentence is a stack of qualifiers ("ensured that I was able to demonstrate") wrapped around a single substantive verb. The second sentence is even weaker — it doesn't say the candidate provided customer service, just that they were responsible for it.

Generally, the more you squeeze in before the main verb of the sentence, the less active it feels. The fix is to delete the qualifying scaffolding and let the action verb do the work.

The fix — search-and-replace your resume

Do a search of your resume and application for "responsible" and "ensured" and remove every instance. Rewrite the sentence to start with what you actually did:

Employers want to hear what you did — not what was required, ensured, or assigned. This is one of the most reliable ways to cut the fluff out of a resume in a single editing pass.

Don't remove yourself from the topic. "I was required to complete tasks" and "I completed tasks" are two very different things. The first describes an obligation. The second describes an action.

The signal words to search and replace

Beyond "responsible" and "ensured," these phrases reliably flag narratively-passive writing. Run a search of your document and replace each instance with the actual verb:

Each of these is doing two jobs at once: it's filling space, and it's hiding the real verb. "Participated in policy development" tells the panel almost nothing. Did you write the policy? Did you review it? Did you sign it off? Did you sit silently in the meeting? "I drafted the policy" tells them. "I reviewed and signed off the policy" tells them. The flat-out fact of what you did is what scores; the qualifier is what dilutes the score.

Why this matters for STAR responses

Active voice matters most in the Action section of a STAR response — which, in our selection criteria guide, we calibrate at roughly 70% of the response's word count. The Action section is where you demonstrate capability. Every sentence that starts with "I was responsible for" or "I was tasked with" is a sentence not earning its place — the panel is looking for what you did, and the qualifier is in the way.

Compare these two openings to the same Action section:

The active version uses slightly more words but tells you what actually happened. That's the trade you want — a panel scoring against capability frameworks rewards specific evidence over filler verbs.

The 2026 angle — active voice as an AI signal

If you've drafted with AI assistance and want to keep the document, the highest-leverage edit is a pass through the document with the signal words above as your search list. Every instance you replace with a specific verb makes the document read more like you and less like the model.

A closing note

Active voice isn't a stylistic preference. It's a way of forcing yourself to commit to specific evidence. "I was responsible for X" lets you avoid saying what you actually did. "I did X" makes you name it. The discipline of writing actively is, mostly, the discipline of telling the truth about your contribution at the level of detail the panel needs.

And once you've done it, the writing improves on every dimension at once — it's shorter, clearer, more specific, more memorable, more scoreable. There's almost no editing pass that's higher-leverage on a resume or selection criteria response than search-and-replacing the signal words.

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