Product management is a highly respected and challenging profession. As a product manager, one must have an expert understanding of the market, business, and product development and exceptional communication skills as it is one of the most vital parts of the role. It might be the dream job for many.
Whenever you approach a company as a fresher or with some experience, the recruiter first goes through your resumé to determine whether you would be a good fit for the company. Even if you’re skilled and have an excellent experience, you may not get into product management without a good resumé.
In this article, chalk out the major areas of improvement to craft an impressive resumé that will help you get into product management.
Identify a Specific and Focused Skillset
As a product manager, you need to deal with the business and marketing unit, designing unit, product development unit, and the customers. You must have the following skills to become a product manager:
- Communication and interpersonal skills
- Analytical research and strategic skills
- Technical, marketing, and business management skills
- Prioritisation skills
Additionally, add a few more specific and focused skills on the role and requirements of the company. Make sure all your skills are according to the need and priorities of the company.
| IT Company | Finance Company | Pharmaceutical Company |
| C++, JAVA, Python, SQL | Data analysis skills | Marketing research expertise |
| Prioritisation skills | Prioritisation skills | Prioritisation skills |
| Strategic skills | Risk Management | Analytical research |
| Agile | Analytical research | A/B testing |
In the table above, observe that the order of skills is modified with different industries. It suggests that each industry requires a specific skill set. Therefore, you must set the order of skills as per the suitability and preference of the company.
Ideally, you must first research the company and identify what the company is seeking. Then arrange the order of your skills according to the company’s job profile.
Education, Behavior, and Awards
Your college or university, academic performance, co-activities, and achievements are an overview of your educational background. However, the employer looks for projects and co-curricular activities that display your empathy, visionary mind, strategic thinking, decisiveness, leadership, communication, or any other product management-related skills.
You need to showcase your soft skills through your past co-curricular activities. The employer always looks for a person with good soft skills who can regulate workflow more effectively.
Most freshers directly add the qualities (such as leadership or communication) in the skill section. However, you must also display your qualities indirectly by attaching them to an event. For instance,
“Have served as president of Eco club society of my college, lead multiple teams, and won 6 intercollege competitions.”
You can add all your achievements and awards, even if they are not directly relevant to the product management field. It always gives a positive impact and a broad perspective of the person you are.
Experience and Current Position
The experience section is the heart of your resumé. If you have some experience, it is preferable to write it first before the education section. Freshers can write the education section first, followed by their internships (If any).
To make your experience section impressive, always include only the most remarkable achievements and key results of your past positions. It’s best to directly quantify them whenever possible. Have these in “bullet points” or short paragraphs (no more than three items per employment).
After writing concisely, highlight your problem-solving expertise linked with your previous work. Do not forget to focus your experience section on the results and outcomes. Mention what strategy or technique implemented by you resulted in growing your previous company by X%. For instance, you can describe your experience and outcomes as:
“worked with executing teams and helped identify gaps in the market, suggested certain changes to product design and improved user experience, which eventually led to 9.8% growth of the company.”
Make sure you keep updating your current position. Outdated details may have a negative impact.
Impeccable Formatting
There are multiple ATS-compliant resumé templates available online. Most people often worry about the format. You can use any template, but your resumé should be concise, simple, have specific keywords, be well organized, and formatted.
The general outline of the resumé has about five sections.
- Your Details
It contains your name, designation, address, and contact details. You can also add your professional social media links, such as that to your LinkedIn account.
- Focused Skillset
This section is for your skills. Always arrange your skills according to the requirement of the company. Make sure you make good use of keywords here.
- Experience Section
This section has to be extensive and gives brief accomplishments and key achievements of your previous roles within companies. It must focus on the impact you created in your role in the previous organizations rather than just stating roles and responsibilities.
- Educational Background
It involves your college or university, specialisation, and academic performance. You can also add courses that the company may value.
- Awards and Achievement
Add all the relevant awards and achievements. However, it would be better to write a brief of how you achieved them to showcase the required skills for the product manager role.
You can learn more about – Basics of Resume Writing
Sample Resumé
To give a better understanding, here is the sample resumé of a product manager.
Ensure that your resumé stands out from the others and covers all of it in one page. Divide your skills into bullet points and eliminate irrelevant details to ensure that only the most relevant ones are presented.
You can refer to – How do you write a good resume for product manager jobs?
Conclusion:
In a nutshell, your resumé should be simple, concise, have relevant key skills, and be well organized. A simple resumé, rich in experience, with skills suitable for the company, helps you get hired for the role of a product manager.
As a product manager, you’ll always have to be on top of your game and continue to learn so you’re ready to adapt when everything changes. Our advice is that while knowledge is power, experience is much more valuable! Therefore, adding relevant skills is always preferable. However, if you don’t have any recent project experience, make sure the rest of your resumé reveals all your great talents, such as a passion for the field and previous projects you’ve worked on.
Be proactive on social media like LinkedIn and show how much interest you have in business – you never know who may be looking for someone like that.
If you aspire to upskill yourself in product management, enrol in a complete course and build a booming career in it.
Join Seekho Select Membership to Learn Product Management or download our app now!
You can also read our other blogs –
