Product Manager Resume Example and Writing Guide 2024
All businesses have a product to sell. That’s true whether it’s a physical product like a washing machine, a digital product like a CRM, or a service. Likewise, all businesses must find ways to develop products their customers want and that address their core needs, and then get the word out about those offerings.
Of course, successfully bringing a product to market and then getting it in front of the right people at the right time is an incredibly complex balancing act. This is where a product manager comes in. A product manager plays a crucial role in driving product development, strategy, and market success.
Product manager is one of the most in-demand positions in the United States. According to Zippia, the field will see an additional 34,000 positions within the next decade, and salaries are increasing significantly, with the average PM earning $111,729.
Want to get into this lucrative, growing field? Maybe you’re already an established product manager and you’re planning to search for a new position. The key to both is to create a compelling product manager resume.
Crafting the perfect product manager skills resume is essential to showcase your abilities, experience, and leadership capabilities in product management. This guide will help you build an impressive resume for 2024. We’ll also answer important questions, like what information to include on a product manager resume, cover the appropriate product manager resume format, and more.
Current resume formats, various product manager resume examples, and pointers put you at the forefront of hiring practices. You can learn a lot from looking through product management resume examples before doing your own. Once you’ve got a good feel for what you want, you can choose from different resume templates.
Product Manager Resume Example
Let’s start with a product manager resume sample that demonstrates how to effectively showcase your experience, achievements, and key skills.
While exploring product manager resume template options is a good decision, you also need to know more about the nuts and bolts of creating one to show off your skills, experience, and qualifications. Below, we’ll discuss what to include in product manager resumes.
How to Write a Good Product Manager’s Resume
It’s essential to write your product manager resume specifically for your skills, experience and industry. Product manager job posts have critical keywords specifically chosen by hiring managers and captured to ATS by recruiters. Including the right product manager resume keywords is essential to get past ATS parsers. That’s how you get on the interview shortlist. Take all your years of experience and compile a detailed resume from your first job to date. List all your product manager skills, hard skills, soft skills and work experience. Now, when you’re applying, go through the job description in the post and extract keywords. Also, take keywords from the job title. Even if your product manager experience is vast, hone in on what the employer is looking for. That way, you beat parsers, excite recruiters and impress hiring managers.
If a technical product manager resume post has a specific job title, copy it, such as:
- IT product manager resume
- Google product manager resume
- Agile product manager resume
- Digital product manager resume
- Facebook product manager resume
- Amazon product manager resume
- Associate product manager resume
- Software product manager resume
As you’re limited to a two-page resume, list only pertinent details. Furthermore, make it scannable and reader-friendly with bullet points and lots of white space. You can expand on your working experience and skills during the hiring process. Write your product manager resume using power verbs that reflect your initiative, innovation and enthusiasm. Make your positive attitude heard in every section of your resume with an upbeat writing style.
What to Include in a Product Manager Resume?
When writing a resume for a product management CV, it’s important to focus on your ability to lead teams, align products with business strategies, and bring successful products to market. Every aspect of your product manager resume should focus on communicating those elements.
That probably sounds like a tough challenge, but there’s good news. It doesn’t have to be. Here’s what you should include:
How to Add Personal Information
There’s little value in sending out your resume for a product manager role without accurate personal details. It’s unlikely anyone’s going to hunt you down. Plus, it indicates a lack of attention to detail, which can be off-putting. Write your full name, address, email and contact numbers. Your address can be in full or just the city and state. All details can be provided if requested. Check and recheck for accuracy before moving on. An ideal way to expand on your professional experience is by adding a link to your LinkedIn profile in this section. Use LinkedIn to expand on your two-pager.
How to Write a Good Personal Profile for a Product Manager
Your personal profile makes your first impression on a hirer. It should be a concise, impactful summary of your career, showcasing your skills, experience, and achievements in product management. Design it to pique interest while communicating important information. The goal is to show that you’re qualified for the position while convincing a hirer to read further.
Mention your expertise in managing product lifecycles, collaborating with teams, and driving product success. Highlight your leadership qualities and your ability to make data-driven decisions. Add some personal color to it, too. However, do all that concisely.
Not sure how any of this might look in reality? Below, you’ll find a few examples of how to create a personal profile for your product management CV.
Graduate Product Manager Resume Profile Example
Junior Product Manager Resume Profile Example
Senior Product Manager Resume Profile Example
Ideally, the personal profile on a product manager resume should be no more than about four sentences. That’s not much space to communicate a lot of information, so take your time. You may find it helpful to write this after you’ve completed the rest of your product manager resume template.
Speaking of completing the rest of the resume, let’s talk about skills. They’re what tell employers you have what it takes to fill the role, but which ones matter the most?
Top Skills to Include on a Product Manager Resume
Being a product manager requires an interesting mix of hard (tech) and soft (people) skills. It also requires that you understand Agile methodology and have good familiarity with scrum procedures.
There’s also a lot of variability in terms of what’s expected of product managers from one company to another. We highly recommend reading the job description in detail and then listing skills that speak directly to that employer’s requirements.
Don’t try to send the same product manager resume to every hirer. Customize the information to make each one more impactful.
- Product Strategy & Roadmaps: A strong product manager resume should emphasize your ability to create and execute product strategies and roadmaps that align with business objectives.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration and Team Leadership: Highlight your experience in working with engineering, marketing, and sales teams to bring products from concept to launch.
- Customer-Centric Approach: product managers need to prioritize customer needs and feedback. However, you can’t expect customers to come right out and say what they need in most instances. Sometimes, they don’t even know themselves. Find ways to show your ability to gather insights and convert them into valuable product features.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Employers look for product managers who make decisions based on data and market analysis. Mention tools or methods you’ve used to gather and analyze product performance data. Not only will that show your ability to make data-driven decisions, but it speaks to your familiarity with commonly used tools and methodologies.
- Agile & Scrum Methodologies: If you’ve worked in Agile environments, emphasize your ability to manage backlogs, plan sprints, and lead teams through Scrum processes. Note that many product manager positions don’t require any experience with Agile or Scrum.
Other skills to highlight include:
- Product Lifecycle Management
- User Research and Customer Insights
- Market Analysis
- Stakeholder Communication
- Roadmap Planning and Prioritization
- Product Launches
- A/B Testing
How to Showcase Product Manager Experience on a Resume
Given the choice between two applicants, hirers will usually go with the more experienced if everything else is equal. Of course, you need to know how to list experience on product manager resumes.
You have two primary options. You can go the conventional route, which is to list experience from the most current position and then backward. Or you can turn things around and start with your earliest position and work your way up to your current one. Either works but choose the one that makes your product manager resume as compelling as possible.
When listing your experience, focus on your achievements rather than just listing responsibilities. Use action verbs and quantify your impact. For example, instead of saying “Managed product development,” say “Led a team of 10 engineers to launch a product that increased market share by 20%.”
Remember, specificity and actionability are important here. Here’s another example of specificity in action: “Led the development of a new mobile app feature that increased daily active users by 15% within the first quarter of launch.”
But what if you don’t have much experience? How do you create a compelling product manager resume if you’re new to the field? We’ll discuss that below.
How to Write a Product Manager Resume with No Experience
If you’re entering the field with little to no direct product management experience, don’t worry! Many product managers come from related fields such as project management, marketing, or development. You can focus on transferable skills and relevant experiences if you don’t have direct PM experience. Here are a few examples and suggestions:
- Highlight Transferable Skills: Emphasize your leadership, project management, and strategic thinking skills, even if they were gained in different roles. If a skill aligns with the new position, highlight it. It also helps to read the job description thoroughly. Often, hirers come right out and specify the skills they need, so you can map those to what you bring to the table.
- Internships & Projects: Mention any product-related projects or internships that demonstrate your ability to manage products or work with cross-functional teams. You don’t necessarily need years of real-world experience as a credentialed product manager. Even spending a little time as an intern can give you the edge over applicants who have less experience.
Here's an example of what this might look like on your resume: “Led a team of developers in a university capstone project to create an MVP for a task management app, applying Agile principles and customer feedback.”
Perhaps the best advice is this: study the job description for the position you want. Then take a long, hard look at your skills and any non-employment experiences. Connect the dots and then list those that speak directly to the employer’s underlying needs.
For instance, if the company wants a “self-starter”, they want someone motivated and willing to take control of processes. If they say “able to pivot”, it means that the environment can be very fast-paced and you’ll have competing priorities and will be expected to change gears immediately with no loss of productivity. List the skills and experiences you bring to the table that make you able to meet those needs. Study a product manager sample resume to master this art.
How to Add Education to a Product Manager Resume
For those with little experience, education becomes more important. Make sure to highlight any relevant degrees or certifications such as a Certified product manager (CPM), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), or any business or tech-related degrees. If you’ve taken courses in product management or Agile methodologies, be sure to include them.
In addition to knowing what to include on your product manager resume, you also need to know the order. List your education after your experience and begin with the most recent certification or degree earned, working backward. List all product manager certifications (or those closely aligned with the job role) first, and then talk about your degrees. This helps ensure that hirers see the most relevant information first.
As a note, the right product manager resume template will help. With CVMaker, you can choose the layout that works best for your unique combination of experience and education. You can also add custom colors, choose fonts, and more, all while benefiting from a selection of resume layouts designed to get you noticed for all the right reasons.
Typically, product managers will have a Bachelor’s degree, but not necessarily in computer science or information technology. Product managers make things happen across diverse business sectors. Therefore their degree must be relevant to their specialization and industry. Examples include Bachelor’s degree in business administration, management, medical or food sciences, engineering or product management. Whatever your education, avoid going into lengthy detail. Education only holds a lot of weight when you’ve got limited working experience. The more years of experience you have, the less it matters.
How to Add Courses and Certifications
Further courses are essential to growing your career because systems, requirements and technology constantly evolve. Furthering your skills and training also show you’re serious about your career. Likewise, membership of a professional association such as AIPMM or PDMA benefits both your career and resume. You can boost your abilities with some of the many specialized courses that can build your skills. Regularly refreshing your software development practices is another no-brainer, considering how fast tech evolves.
References
Finish your product manager off with references. It’s preferable to not provide full contact details unless the job post explicitly asks for them. Instead, list references as available on request and give details later in the hiring process You only need one or two references. It’s good to give your reference contacts a heads up in advance. That way, they’re prepared and can you feel more confident.
Related Resume Templates
Are product management resume examples not entirely up your alley? We’ve got a super portfolio of other business-related templates for you.
- Business Intelligence Analyst Resume
- Business Analyst Resume
- Data Analyst Resume
- Financial Analyst Resume
- Computer Science Resume
- Data Scientist Resume
- Data Engineer Resume
Key Takeaways
Whether you’re looking at getting your foot in the door as a beginning product manager or moving to another company within your current role, a customized product manager resume is important. However, you must do more than just dump your job and education information into a generic resume format. A customized product manager resume template will help guide you and ensure that you make a great first impression.
Tailor your resume to highlight your ability to lead teams, manage product lifecycles, and drive successful launches. And remember that each job opening deserves a customized resume. You can’t expect to start a rewarding career using a generic, one-size-fits-all approach. Read each job description and then tweak your resume so that you’re perfectly aligned with the hirer’s expectations and requirements.
Use specific achievements to demonstrate your impact in previous roles. Hirers want to make informed decisions, not hire a “warm body” to fill a role. Show them that you’re the right person for the job by listing achievements and experiences you’ve had in related roles, even if those weren’t specifically product manager positions.
If you have no direct experience, focus on transferable skills and relevant education. Many management roles blur the lines here. You can also transfer PMP-related skills and experiences, so if you feel that you have a skill or training that’s applicable, don’t be afraid to list it. Customize your resume to reflect your expertise in product strategy, customer focus, and data-driven decision-making.
FAQ
1. What should I include in a product manager resume?
Include your contact information, personal profile, work experience, education, and key skills. However, it’s important that you tailor each resume to the job opening in question. Each submission should be customized to the employer’s underlying need, so the goal is to tweak your information to present yourself as the best candidate for the job from the hirer’s perspective.
2. How do I write an effective product manager resume summary?
Focus on your experience and key achievements, emphasizing your ability to lead and collaborate across teams. Keep it brief, no more than about four sentences. The goal is to give a concise, accurate picture of your professional self, including career goals.
3. What are the top skills to highlight in a product manager resume?
We recommend that you discuss skills like product lifecycle management, Agile methodologies, data-driven decision-making, and cross-functional team leadership. You can also tie in related skills from other management roles that would help make you more effective in the position.
4. How can I showcase my experience managing product life cycles on a resume?
Use specific examples and metrics that show your ability to guide products from ideation to launch and beyond. You should also show experience in things like teamwork, communication, stakeholder relations, and more.
5. Should I include technical skills on a product manager resume?
Yes, definitely include technical skills relevant to your industry, such as Agile methodologies, data analysis, and software development.
6. How do I tailor my product manager resume for a specific industry or company?
Research the company’s products, history, and growth, as well as any relevant industry trends, then adjust your resume to highlight relevant experience and skills. Do this for every resume submission. Don’t try to send the same resume to multiple hirers.
7. What certifications or qualifications should be listed on a product manager resume?
Include any certifications like Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) or Pragmatic Institute certifications. If you lack certifications, list internships and other experiences that helped you develop product management-related skills. This can include product development, team leadership/management, and even marketing in some cases.
8. How can I demonstrate leadership and cross-functional collaboration on my product manager resume?
Highlight instances where you led teams, collaborated with departments, and drove product success. Skills that hirers are looking for here include good communication, empathy, the ability to prioritize competing priorities, stakeholder engagement, and fast decision-making.
9. What metrics or KPIs should I use to quantify my success as a product manager?
Include metrics like user growth, revenue increase, time-to-market improvements, or cost savings. The idea is to show measurements that communicate specific information. Remember that specificity is your friend and generalization is not.
10. How should I structure a resume for an entry-level product manager position?
Study product manager resume examples to get an idea of how different levels of experience look on paper. For an entry-level product manager position, tailor your product manager CV to focus on relevant projects, internships, and transferable skills. Include a strong personal profile that shows your potential to succeed in the role.