For each isometry V acting on some Hilbert space and a pair of vectors f and g in the same Hilbert space, we associate a nonnegative number c(V; f, g) defined by $$\begin{aligned} c(V; f,g) = (\Vert f\Vert ^2 - \Vert V^*f\Vert ^2) \Vert g\Vert ^2 + |1 + \langle V^*f , g\rangle |^2. \end{aligned}$$We prove that the rank-one perturbation \(V + f \otimes g\) is left-invertible if and only if $$\begin{aligned} c(V;f,g) \ne 0. \end{aligned}$$We also consider examples of rank-one perturbations of isometries that are shift on some Hilbert space of analytic functions. Here, shift refers to the operator of multiplication by the coordinate function z. Finally, we examine \(D + f \otimes g\), where D is a diagonal operator with nonzero diagonal entries and f and g are vectors with nonzero Fourier coefficients. We prove that \(D + f\otimes g\) is left-invertible if and only if \(D+f\otimes g\) is invertible.