Product Manager
Resume Sample

Product managers take on a whole boatload of responsibilities, overseeing products from outline and development to rollout and refinement. As a product manager, you’ll own the success of your product line.

To snag the job of your dreams, you’ll need an effective product manager resume and matching cover letter. Read on to find how to write a high-quality resume and score points with the hiring manager. Our tips are based on proven methods to make sure your resume stands out.

Tip #1. List Your Skills on Your Product Manager Resume—Hard and Soft

Hiring managers will want to know whether you can hit the ground running if they bring you on board. That’s why you should list your skills on your product manager resume.

You should include a good mix of soft and hard skills, since product managers have both management responsibilities and technical duties.

Soft skills concern your personality and apply across industries—they’re essential to delivering your work. As a product manager, you’ll need these soft skills:

• Leadership skills—to manage and direct your team
• Interpersonal skills—to interact with other teams to make sure your products succeed
• Coordination—to deliver products on schedule and balance priorities

By contrast, hard skills are industry based and often technically focused. Because you’ll have to be a specialist in your product line, you’ll need exemplary hard skills:

• Software skills—for example, if you specialize in software packages
• Analytical skills—to find gaps in the market and calculate potential profits
• Marketing skills—to plan and execute effective sales campaigns

Our candidate balances hard and soft skills on her product manager resume:

Tip #2. Emphasize Your Certifications and Awards

While your skills section shows hiring managers what you can achieve, your certifications and awards showcase what you’ve already achieved.

Certifications

Given the technical nature of product management, you might need a particular certification to work on certain specialized products.

With that in mind, take a close look at the job posting and check whether it mentions desirable certifications. If it doesn’t, mention certifications that are linked to the company’s product line.

For example, since the job posting mentions that the company uses the Scrum framework, our candidate lists her Scrum-related certification:

Awards

Including awards she’s won is another effective way for our candidate to showcase her record of achievement:

These two awards show that her performance has been recognized both within and outside her company. As well as receiving an award from her managers, she’s been given an award by a statewide industry-level group for a product launch that she led.

Including awards you’ve earned on your own product manager resume helps prove to hiring managers that you’re worth their time.

Tip #3. Optimize Your Resume Using Quantifiable Data & Action Verbs

Your professional experience (sometimes called work experience) section is the largest section on most product manager resumes. Thus, you can pack it with impressive facts and achievements to catch the eye of even the most cynical hiring manager.

Quantifiable Data

You can optimize your work experience section by including quantifiable data. Things like statistics, metrics, or numbers should be included in as many of your bullet points as possible.

By inserting quantifiable data into your product manager resume, you show the hiring manager not only the type of work you’ve done in the past but also how effective you were when executing that work. Such information gives them an idea of what you’ll contribute to their firm.

Check out our how our job seeker integrates statistics into her work experience bullets:

 

Remember to keep track of your achievements as you progress through your career. Spreadsheets like Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel are perfect for listing the products you’ve worked on, how many sales they’ve made, and how much profit they’ve generated. This information will be useful when you hit the job market in the future.

Action Verbs

You also need to use action verbs in your work experience section.

Strong action verbs make your product manager resume more compelling. By using them, you present yourself as more competent, more authoritative, and more dynamic than someone using flat, ordinary verbs.

Here are some effective ways our candidate uses strong action verbs in her resume:

Try Out Our Tips

Now that we’ve shared our best tips for perfecting your product manager resume, give them a try as you write yours.

If you’d like to see more resume templates—all of which are free to use and download—check out our library of professional resume templates. Don’t forget, you’ll need a matching cover letter template.

No time for templates? Use our simple, fast, and up-to-date resume builder to create a top-quality product manager resume in a matter of minutes.