Putting Together The Best Possible Product Manager Resume
Product management is a field with a lot of possibilities. It’s one in which you can find yourself coordinating a workflow for a product which is fascinating and gives you an extremely large amount of power, even if you aren’t directly connected to the product itself. The amazing thing about management is that your skills will likely be so different from the people who you are managing. And yet you will be responsible for their actions and for the outcome of the project. Finding work in this field is a unique challenge. It’s at the corner of a whole selection of different skills and fields which means that it requires a lot to prove your capabilities and your abilities to carry out such a diverse role. Furthermore, there is a great deal that is unknown about the field for a lot of people, since it relies heavily on modern technology and a rapidly advancing understanding of what is possible. With that said, let’s jump into some tips for making the best possible resume you can to secure the product manager position you want.
Prioritize Your Project History
This is one of the most important pieces of advice for this career path specifically. One of the really difficult elements to getting work in this field is proving your capability. A lot of people view their resume as a chance to boast about the different jobs they’ve held in the past, their experience in a working environment etc. For product management the important thing to get across is your actual skill in product management. “When putting your resume together, it’s not always obvious what works and what doesn’t. For example, you may have worked an internship at a fancy finance company but the really valuable experience could have been when you organized a charity fundraiser”, says Tomas Smit, recruiter at UK Writings and Essay Roo. So, prepare to be creative and do some thinking to get the best results.
Don’t Slack On The Specific Knowledge
Being a product manager can sometimes feel like a job that anchors around a lot of soft skills. What I mean by this is that skills like ‘good at teamwork’, ‘excellent communicator’ and ‘highly organized’ are difficult to quantify and seem a bit flimsy. Now, the reality is that all of those skills and all of the others that seem pertinent but a bit vague are actually all vital parts to being a product manager and if you know that you are strong in those areas you certainly should make that clear. However, these are baseline principles that might not cut it when applying to a competitive job. As previously mentioned, product management falls at the crossroads of a few different fields which can be summed up in broad segments: business and technology, for example. To put together a successful resume you want to prove that you have specific and detailed knowledge in both of these fields, so that your practical contributions are supported by a strong theoretical understanding of the industries surrounding your ‘product’.
Well Written And Clear
The interesting thing about a resume in the product management field is that it holds weight as an example, in of itself, of what you are capable of. This contrasts to most people’s resumes. For example, someone applying to a career in coding isn’t going to have their resume looked at as an important indicator as to whether their ability as a coder is strong, except in relation to the details actually written on the resume. For product management, the resume itself is a sort of product and you have been responsible for the construction, organization and distribution of the product, all of which turns it into a test run of what you, hopefully, will end up doing for the job you have applied to. So, it has to be well written, clearly laid out and demonstrate your professionalism and ability to communicate effectively. This is easier said than done, so let’s take a look at some sites that could help you out.
Study demic and Via Writing — Two copywriting guides, for nailing accuracy.
Boom Essays and Academized — These will really help you out when you do the edit, a vital step.
Simple Grad and MyWritingWay — A pair of grammar checkers.
OxEssays — A proofreading tool to catch the little slips (mentioned here).
Academ Advisor and LetsGoAndLearn — For generating keywords and action words.
StateOfWriting and EliteAssignmentHelp — Some formatting tools, for squeezing in everything you need in an orderly way.
Conclusion
The fact that you have taken the time and effort to seek out this article shows that you probably are already someone with a good mind for product management. You have to manage your resume as if you’re managing a product, paying attention to detail and using knowledge and forethought to figure out how to correctly communicate with your potential employer.
Author: Nora Mork is a business and marketing journalist at Australian Help and Paper Fellows. She shares her ideas by writing columns for magazines and blogs, such as Big Assignments.
