How to Write a Product Manager Resume That Gets You Interviews

Did you know that product management roles are among the most difficult to obtain in today’s job market? With an ever-growing number of skilled professionals applying, standing out requires more than just experience - it demands a product manager resume that immediately grabs attention.

Your resume often represents the first impression you make with potential employers. As such, if it's not crafted to showcase your strengths effectively, it could be the reason you're not getting callbacks. By reading on, you’ll learn how to create one that guarantees you get interviews.

Hi, I’m Dr Nancy Li, and I’m a Director of product. In this article, I’ll be showing you how to write a product manager resume in a way that gets you noticed. The insight offered here is the result of the analysis of more than 125,000 interviews combined with recruiter feedback, meaning you’re in very good hands!

“Why is it so hard to get a job as a product manager?”

Your product manager resume needs to stand out from the crowd primarily because of the fierce competition. It’s a popular role due to the extremely interesting and impactful work involved, as well as the great salaries. As such, a hiring manager must look through dozens of applications at a time, leaving them only 7-10 seconds to read and digest what’s on them. 

The key to standing out from all the ‘noise’ of other applicants is to craft a well-structured resume that not only gets past the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) but that catches the hiring manager’s eye. 

So, let’s waste no more time in getting into the product manager resume tips I promised you a short moment ago.

“What is the best format for a product manager resume?”

The structure of your resume should reflect your industry experience. It should cover no more than 1 page if you’re new to the role and up to 1-2 pages if you’re a senior professional with years under your belt. 

Contact Information

Starting at the beginning, your contact information needs to be clearly shown, along with a link to your LinkedIn profile. This part needs to be distinctly separate from the rest of the information on your product manager resume. 

Example:

Tim Cross
Miami, FL, 830-911-911 | [email protected] | LinkedIn | Portfolio

What to avoid: Including photos, as it can introduce conscious/unconscious bias and cause the ATS to automatically reject your application. 

Technical Skills 

Successful product managers typically possess a wide range of PM skills, so it may be difficult to include everything you accomplished in every role. Instead, focus on the most impactful product manager resume skills and tailor them to the application. 

Listed separately from work experience (which we’ll cover a little later), the technical skills you list will allow the ATS and hiring managers to see what you’re currently proficient in. As such, you’ll be mentioning your skills disciplines like:

• Product Management Tools: JIRA, Confluence, Trello, Asana, Monday.com.
• Data Analysis Tools: Excel, SQL, Tableau, Google Analytics, Power BI.
• Agile and Scrum Methodologies: Scrum, Kanban, SAFe Agile frameworks.
• User Experience Design: Wireframing (e.g., Figma, Sketch), UX/UI principles.
• Prototyping Tools: InVision, Balsamiq, Adobe XD.
• Market Research Tools: SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Hotjar.
• A/B Testing and Optimization: Optimizely, Google Optimize.

Obviously, you should only include the skills you possess and talk about them while also putting them into some real-world context, such as:

“Collaborated with UX designers to create wireframes in Figma, leading to the launch of an improved onboarding flow that reduced churn by 10%.”

What to Avoid: Vague descriptions. Whenever possible, use quantifiable figures to show how your technical skills contributed to measurable results.

Soft Skills 

In addition to technical product manager resume skills, the soft skills you list can be just as critical to your attempts to get an interview call back. Rather than speaking about concrete technical abilities, these speak to a person’s character and overall professional abilities. These important skills include:

• Communication: Vital in articulating product visions and decisions to product teams
• Empathy: An essential interpersonal skill in assessing customer feedback
• Leadership: Showing your ability to guide teams toward shared goals
• Problem-Solving: Product managers often face complex technical and logistical challenges that require creativity and strategic thinking.
• Negotiation: Showing an ability to find mutually beneficial solutions for problems, understanding that different teams and stakeholders may have competing interests.
• Time Management: The monitoring and prioritizing of tasks with competing deadlines to ensure that the team reaches short-term and long-term goals.

You can integrate your soft skills into your work experience along with your technical skills. For example, you might include something like:

“Led an initiative to gather feedback from 20% of active customers to 

better understand pain points and user priorities”

As with technical skills, you should quantify your achievements to highlight the impact of your contributions. Regardless of whether you have a manager or supervisory role, it is always good to highlight your teamwork and leadership skills. 

What to avoid: While you shouldn’t embellish or lie about your responsibilities or achievements, you shouldn’t undersell your skills. This is your time to sell yourself!

Work Experience

Your work experience section is the heart of your product manager resume, particularly if you’re applying for senior or Director-level roles. This is your opportunity to demonstrate how your skills, both technical and soft, have been applied in real-world settings to deliver measurable results. 

Recruiters and hiring managers look here to understand your impact and determine whether your skills and experience align with their needs. When crafting this section, focus on your most relevant roles and accomplishments and structure each entry in the following way:

• Role and Company: Include your job title, the company name, and dates of employment.
• Responsibilities and Achievements: Use bullet points to describe key tasks, focusing on accomplishments and their impact.
• Quantifiable Results: Highlight metrics wherever possible (e.g., revenue growth, increased efficiency, reduced churn).

Here’s an example of what a strong work experience entry might look like:

Example:
Product Manager
ABC Tech Solutions | Jan 2020 – Present

Defined and executed the product roadmap, resulting in a 30% increase in user retention within 12 months. Collaborated with cross-functional teams, including engineering, design, and marketing, to launch three new features, driving a 15% boost in subscription rates. Utilized SQL and Tableau to analyze user behavior data, informing prioritization of key product improvements.

What to avoid: Don’t include every task from your previous jobs. Focus on the most relevant and impactful responsibilities.

Education and Certifications

If you don’t have any actual work experience to list on your product manager resume, you’ll be using your past education to sell yourself. In this section, you can highlight any degrees you completed, where you earned that degree, and the dates covered.

Seasoned professionals can also highlight any continuing education they’ve completed, including product management training or certifications. Highlighting your professional training demonstrates that you’re interested in expanding your knowledge and skills and can set you apart during the hiring process. 

What to avoid: Include your thesis or dissertation topic unless you are a recent graduate or unless it demonstrates subject matter expertise relevant to the role you’re applying for.

“Why Should I Include Keywords in My Resume for a PM Job?

So, why should you include keywords on a product manager resume? Is it just for the sake of the ATS system? Partly, but that’s not the only reason. You’ll also be including them in order to grab the attention of recruiters - something they’ll do, especially when they’re carefully chosen to match the job you’re applying for. 

The terms you add will shout about your industry knowledge and experience. Here are some of the most common you might include:

• Product Lifecycle Management: The process of managing the end-to-end process of product development and delivery.
• Roadmap Creation: Developing and maintaining product roadmaps to align with company goals.
• Market Research and Analysis: Identifying customer needs, competitor strategies, and market opportunities.
• Data-driven Decision-making: Leveraging analytics to guide product strategy.
• Customer Journey Mapping: Understanding and optimizing the customer experience.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Leading and aligning teams across engineering, marketing, sales, and design.
• User Story Creation: Writing & managing user stories for development teams.
• KPIs and success metrics: Defining & measuring product performance indicators.
• Stakeholder management: Engaging with executives, customers, and partners to align on product goals.
• UX/UI design principles: Incorporating user experience and interface design into product decisions.

The keywords you use on your product manager resume will say much more about you than you might realize. Just remember that you may be quizzed about what you include, so base it on fact, not fiction. Here’s how you might write about your expertise with appropriate keywords:

“Developed and maintained a product roadmap aligned with company goals, driving the successful delivery of three high-impact features in two quarters.”

What to avoid: Avoid simply creating a list of buzzwords. Try to demonstrate how you’ve applied these skills through specific achievements or responsibilities.

Your Product Manager Resume is Key to Your Success

Attempting to create a standout resume for a PM role can feel a little overwhelming, but by incorporating the product manager resume examples we’ve covered here, you’ll add real depth and relatability. Adjust yours to include the skills, experience and keywords mentioned and you’ll give yourself the best possible chance. 

I truly hope you’ve found this article helpful, and if you’re interested, you might want to use my PM resume template that allowed me to receive 4 PM job offers (3 are Director offers) in under 2 months! That’s it from me this time around. Be sure to check in with me soon for more helpful guidance on landing your dream role. 

Until next time!