You want a high TC? Drive a Lamborghini? Here’s how to create a Product Management resume to highlight key PM skills. Product management is difficult because it’s a collection of hard and soft skills. Making sure you cover these skills will maximize your chances to get that interview.
Product Management is not considered a major in most universities and getting a certificate won’t help. Coders can go to a boot camp and learn some hard skills, but it is not that straightforward to attain the skills necessary for Product Management. The skills that make a successful product manager are pretty vague. Product managers need skills to formulate a vision, identify the target market, and understand their competition. So yes, a lot of soft skills.
Take a look at this job posting from Stripe. It explicitly lists out the skills they want for product managers.
Here Are The Top 10 Product Management Skills To Highlight On Your Resume
1) Analytical Thinking Skills and Product Sense
Product Managers use analytical thinking skills to identify product opportunities. Analytical thinking is also needed to help develop the product strategy. These skills also help to break down complex problems into manageable pieces which help with finding a solution.
The analytical thinking process starts with identifying the problem. You can help identify the root cause of a problem by looking for patterns in historical data. Once you have the root cause identified then you can continue to solve the problem.
How to show Analytical Thinking On Your Resume:
Resume Example: Own features and experiments end-to-end, including PRD’s, driving cross-functional execution, product decisions, and launch.
2) Communication Skills
Product managers that can BS the best are the ones that succeed. Communication skill is important because you need to present your ideas clearly. Good communication skills can make you seem like a good Product Manager even if you’re not.
Communication skills are not just about the ability to speak but also the ability to listen too. These skills help product managers to establish credibility, build rapport, and persuade others. There are a lot of teams that PMs need to communicate with as a part of their job. Therefore further stresses the need to have good communication skills. Here are some areas of communication skills to focus on.
- Communicate Vision – As a PM you’ll need communication skills to sell your idea of what to build and why.
- Frequency In Communication – Do people feel like they know the latest update? or are they lost wondering what’s going on?
- Communication Clarity – Are you able to communicate clearly so that others understand or are they more confused than before?
- Non-Verbal Communication – Does your body language help you communicate your goal convincingly?
- Negotiation skills – Product Managers need the skills to negotiate and influence stakeholders to drive decision-making.
How to Highlight Communication Skills On Your Resume
Resume Example: Communicate and align Product, roadmap, goals, progress, blockers, and launch plans to management and stakeholders.
3) Technical Skills
It’s not enough to just be a good communicator, Product Managers need to have technical skills as well. Technical skills is needed to understand how software is developed. Since they interact with engineers, product managers need a deep understanding of what is technically possible and what is not. To communicate well with both engineers and designers, PMs should have basic coding or technical knowledge of software development.
How to Highlight Technical Skills On Your Resume
Resume Example: Partner with engineering, designers, and data scientists to build _________ Product.
4) Customer Empathy Skills
Customer empathy skills show how well you understand customers’ needs and motivations. This skill is important to create products that customers will love. The first screening call for every product management interview will test your customer empathy skills. This is also considered product sense. If you don’t convey customer empathy, you won’t get too far in the interview process.
Highlight Customer Empathy Skills On Your Resume:
Resume Example: Interview Customers to understand trends in user behaviors to drive strategy and growth.
5) Data Analysis Skills And Problem-Solving
Product managers are responsible for analyzing data and extracting meaningful information from it. They need to understand the structure of data and be able to collect relevant data from various sources. Analyzing data can help them make more informed decisions, improve systems or processes, optimize business operations, and identify opportunities that they may have otherwise missed.
How to Highlight Data Analysis Skills In Your Resume
Resume Example: Launch experiments to understand user insights to make data-informed decisions and tradeoffs for new features.
6) Entrepreneurship Skills For Product Management
Entrepreneurship skills are essential for product managers. PMs develop a market, understand customer needs and then create products that meet those needs. Product managers should know business operations, marketing, and product development. They should also be able to work with people from various departments to ensure that the company’s vision is achieved.
How to Highlight Entrepreneurship In Your Resume:
Resume Example: Own the product launch for _________ from inception to launch, collaborating with engineering to launch _______.
7) Product Management Leadership And Management Skills
Leadership skills are important to help product managers make decisions. There are always conflicting viewpoints. Leadership skills are needed to sort through that and come out with some direction. PMs also need to communicate this vision to customers, employees, and stakeholders. An effective product manager balances being decisive and being open to suggestions. Leadership skills include listening, asking questions, taking feedback from others, and maintaining a sense of humility.
How to Highlight Leadership Skill In Your Resume:
Resume Example: Work with cross-functional teams to lead product vision, strategy, and roadmap with an understanding of the company’s mission. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductManagement/comments/tuyt8j/open_discussion_what_does_leadership_mean_to_you/
8) Product Management UX Skills
Product managers should be able to work with UX designers to understand how to solve customer pain points. That’s why UX skills are necessary for a product manager to have.
A product manager needs to understand how people interact with software to create a better user experience. They should also be able to create user flows and wireframes for the product.
How to Highlight Leadership Skill In Your Resume:
Resume Example: Work with designers and engineers to build delightful user experiences that drive growth.
9) Sales and Go To Market Skills
Product managers are responsible for the sales and go-to-market strategy of a product. Go to market strategies will have to think of the who, what, where, and how of a product launch. Here’s a quick summary of what you need to master for basic go-to-market skills.
- What – What’s the product’s unique sales pitch?
- Who – Who are you targeting the product to?
- Where – Where will you launch your product to?
- How – How will you reach your audience? Digital, physical, organic, or paid?
How to Highlight Go To Market Skill In Your Resume:
Resume Example: Develop go-to-market strategy to successfully launch _______ product.
10) Product Management Prioritization skills
Prioritization skills are an important skill for product managers since it’s used to decide what tasks should be focused on first. With limited resources, interviewers want to see that you know how to work on what matters most. That is why prioritization skills are so important as a product manager.
How to Highlight Prioritization In Your Resume:
Resume Example: Lead prioritization of weekly backlog items with engineering.
Creating A Product Management Resume With All These Skills
Combining all these product management skills into your resume will help you to portray yourself as a well-rounded product manager. Looking at all the job postings listed above, you can see that companies are looking for these skills. Putting all the above samples together you get a decent resume.
Sample Product Management resume incorporating PM skills
- Own features and experiments end-to-end, including PRD’s, driving cross-functional execution, product decisions, and launch.
- Communicate and align Product, roadmap, goals, progress, blockers, and launch plans to management and stakeholders.
- Partner with engineering, designers, and data scientists to build (Insert Product Here) Product.
- Interview Customers to understand trends in user behaviors to drive strategy and growth.
- Launch experiments to understand user insights to make data-informed decisions and tradeoffs for new features.
- Work with cross-functional teams to lead product vision, strategy, and roadmap with an understanding of the company’s mission.
- Develop a go-to-market strategy to successfully launch (Insert Product Here) product.
- Lead prioritization of weekly backlog items with engineering.
The best way to create a resume is to understand the skills that companies are looking for and reverse engineer those skills to create your resume. We’ve provided examples for each of the 10 product management skills, all you need to do is apply them to specific examples you’ve experienced at your job. The next step is the interview prep. For that check out our list of 99 Product Management Interview Questions and join our PM discord channel to do some mock interviews.
