1. Resumes
It’s not your experience that lands you an interview; it’s how your resume presents that experience. Even the best candidate in the world won’t get an interview with a lousy resume. After all a company wouldn’t know that she’s the best candidate in the world.
2. And in fact many great candidates do have lousy resumes. They lack perspective about their own experience get confused by out-of-date advice from career counselors don’t back up what they’ve done with specifics or write generic lofty statements that end up meaning nothing to the resume screeners.
3. A bad resume is an issue for any job but especially so for product management roles. Communication is an important PM skill and your resume is one clear way to demonstrate that. A PM who can’t express her skills and accomplishments in a clear, concise and effective way is a bit worrisome. Much more so than in other roles you’ll be judged for the quality of your resume.
4. The 15 Second Rule
You know what a resume is but do you truly understand how it’s used? (Wait! Don’t skip over this section! You actually need to understand this to write a good resume.)
5. A resume isn’t read; it’s skimmed. A resume screener will glance at your resume for about 15 seconds (or maybe less) to make a decision about whether or not to interview you.
6. This forms the guiding principle of resumes. A resume should be optimized for that 15-second skim. Let that soak in. We will come back to this principle again and again.
7. The Rules
Every rule has its exception but they’re called rules for a reason. Proceed carefully if you think one of these rules doesn’t apply to you.
8. Rule #1: Shorter is Better-
Imagine I wanted to tell you as much about myself as I can but your attention span is only 15 seconds. Should I give you my 300-page autobiography? Or my condensed one-paragraph version? The 300-page version will have a lot more information but that doesn’t matter. In 15 seconds you’ll only have time to read the first paragraph. I’d be lucky if you learned where I was born in that time. Although I offered more information you actually learned a lot less about me. A long resume is like that. It takes all your best content and then mixes in less important information leaving the resume reader with a worse overall impression of you. It’s best to stick to just the highlights.
9. Implementing This Rule-
A good rule of thumb is to limit your resume to one page if you have less than 10 years of experience. At more than 10 years you might be able to justify 1.5 or 2 pages particularly if you’ve held many different jobs. Before you say you can’t possibly fit everything you’ve done on one page you’re right; you can’t. However you can fit the most important things on one page. You might have to be more concise but that’s a good thing. This means that you’re sticking to the highlights. When you’re thinking you need more space for a particular role ask yourself what about that role is most important. Is it the fact you were a coder at one point? Is it the impact you had in reducing the company’s costs? Is it just the name of the company? Focus on what is important and leave out the rest. Also if just a few lines force your resume onto another page find a way to trim down your resume. A resume that just barely goes onto a second page suggests a poor ability to prioritize.
10. Rule #2: Bullets Not Blobs- Many people live by a rule of “talk more about what’s more important.” There is some wisdom to this guidance but it can backfire on a resume. The longer a chunk of text is the less likely a resume screener is to read the resume.
11. Blobs of text—that is bullets or paragraphs that are three lines or longer—tend to not be read. Keep things short.
12. Implementing This Rule-
Read through your resume. Anything that’s three lines of text or more should be condensed. Additionally you should aim to have no more than 50 percent of your bullets expand to two lines. That is at least half of your bullets should be just one line with the remainder being two lines. Depending on the situation this might require alternative word choices or it might require cutting out some of the details. The impact of your work often matters more than the details so it’s okay to skimp here. Additionally if just a few words of a bullet cause it to flow to the next line trim it. You will waste space otherwise.
13. Rule #3: Accomplishments Not Responsibilities-
People don’t care what you were told to do; they care what you did. Responsibilities are about what you were told to do. Statements outlining these offer only a broad fluffy overview of what you were supposed to do in your job. They don’t make it clear if you actually had an impact. Moreover your responsibilities are often pretty obvious. We know broadly speaking what a product manager or a software developer would do at a company. Instead you want to focus on your accomplishments. Prove to the resume screener you had an impact. Consider the difference between these two bullets: Responsibility Oriented: Design features for Amazon S3 and oversee development of the features across software engineers and testers. Accomplishment Oriented: Designed the SS Frontline feature managed its development and led its integration across three products leading to an additional $10 million in revenue. While the first bullet gives some some information about what you did the reader won’t walk away saying “You were a success because_____.” Make your resume look more like the second bullet. That shows success.
14. Implementing This Rule-
Using the present tense is a good tip-off that you’ve listed a responsibility. It’s difficult for something you accomplished to be written in the present tense. Making your resume accomplishment oriented goes beyond that though. After all if you took the earlier example bullet and converted it to past tense it still wouldn’t be a true accomplishment. Instead list the concrete ways you had an impact. Focus on the impact itself; the “what” more so than the “how” (although both are important). As much as possible quantify your accomplishments. How much money did you make for your company? How much time did you save your team? By how much did you improve customer retention? An estimation is okay here. If you have an existing resume it might help to start from scratch with one of these questions in mind: What are the five things you are most proud of? What would your team say are the five most impactful things you did? The answers to these questions should form your bullets. Your responsibilities should generally be clear from your specific accomplishments and from your job title. However if you feel you must explain your general responsibilities a good place is immediately under the job title and in italics so as to separate it from your true accomplishments.
15. Rule #4: Use a Good Template
Every few months some website or blog publishes a list of “amazing” resume designs which undoubtedly a bunch of job seekers attempt to copy. Such resumes use infographic-style charts or mockup a resume in the style of the Amazon.com homepage or the iOS homescreen. These resumes are cute they might show some degree of creativity and they might even grab someone’s attention. But unless you’re one of the lucky few to garner some media attention for your flashy design (or you’re applying for a designer position) a resume template like this will generally hurt you. Many hiring managers hate these graphical resumes because it’s hard to learn much about you. Information isn’t presented in a clear way and the information that is presented takes up way more space than necessary. A good resume template won’t make your friends “ooh” and “ahh.” It probably won’t be flashy or particularly creative. But it will get the job done—which means landing you an interview.
16. Implementing This Rule-
A good resume is reasonably compact and quickly showcases your highlights. Look for a resume template with the following: Two or three columns one for company names and the other for jobs titles. You want to make this information very easy to pick out especially if you have a top company on your resume. Location and dates are considerably less important. They need to be there but they don’t need to leap out at the resume screener. No left column dedicated to headings. Many resume templates use the left side of the page for headings such as “Employment” and “Education.” This looks attractive but can waste 20 percent of the available space. Limited text stylings. Too many fonts sizes casings and colors can be distracting. Reasonable use of whitespace. Too much whitespace wastes space. Too little can make your resume difficult to read and can suggest that you’re not good at prioritizing. Reasonable font size and margins. You want something that’s easy to read while not being wasteful with space. Bullets. Blocks of text look pretty (particularly on a graphical resume) but will be skipped.
17. Rule #5: Don’t Skip the Best Stuff
In theory this is obvious. Of course you shouldn’t leave the best stuff off your resume. In practice though many candidates ignore this final rule. They leave something out because they didn’t feel it was “appropriate” for a resume for <insert strange reason>. This is so common and so important that we’ve listed it as a rule. For example Jessica a product manager at Amazon was applying for other PM jobs at Amazon and other companies. After multiple rounds of resume editing and feedback her resume was almost perfect—except for one detail. She’d neglected to mention that she had on the side launched a gaming company hired multiple developers and designers and overseen the development of a game. The combination of this entrepreneurial effort and the Amazon job are basically her golden ticket into any PM interview. Why didn’t she include it? Because due to some medical problems she hadn’t yet launched the game. She figured that you couldn’t list it until you were “done.” In similar situations other people have given a variety of reasons: “It was for a class.” “It wasn’t an official class project.” “We haven’t finished yet.” “We didn’t get many downloads. None of these reasons are sufficient to exclude something from your resume. If it helps you list it.
18. Implementing This Rule-
Ask yourself: what did you not include? Are there projects you’ve done (on your own for school for a friend’s company for a hackathon etc.) that you haven’t listed? Any relevant hobbies? Or interests which have some interesting accomplishment (e.g. completing a triathlon)? There are no hard and fast rules about what belongs on your resume and what doesn’t. If it makes you a more interesting or more attractive candidate include it.
19. Attributes of a Good PM Resume
Employers want PMs who have technical skills love technology possess initiative are leaders and will have an impact. A resume is a chance to showcase these parts of your background. It’s more than that though. A resume is itself a product. It makes a statement about your communication skills design skills and your ability to put yourself in the “user’s shoes.” Think about your audience: What do they care about and how will you demonstrate that you have those things? For example if you work for a company that’s not well known can you concisely describe what the company is on the resume? Is there a way you can establish credibility such as mentioning who funded the company? This is your chance to show off your “product design” skills. For many PM positions it will be important to demonstrate these skills: Passion for Technology: If you have technical skills or have worked at a tech company this will probably show enough passion for technology. If you don’t have these things find some other way to get involved with technology. You could start learning to code through online courses build your own website or even outsource development of a project. Initiative: You could show initiative through a club at your university a new employee training program at your startup or even a monthly dinner for people interested in technology. Show these experiences on your resume. Leadership: If you’ve managed people in some capacity show this. This experience could include mentoring / managing an intern or being the president of a club or organization. Impact: Show that you’ve had a positive impact in your prior roles. Be clear about what you’ve personally driven since your team’s accomplishments are much less relevant than your own. Explicitly state what you’ve built created led or implemented. Avoid weak phrases such as “worked with” and “helped with.” Technical Skills: If you have programming skills list these programming languages in a “technical skills” section. This will suggest some degree of proficiency. Ideally you will also have specific projects to list. Attention to Detail: This is more about what you don’t do than what you do. No spelling or grammar mistakes. Consistency in ending bullets with periods (periods are optional but you need to be consistent). Correct contact information. Go through your resume and look for signs of each of these attributes. If you’re missing some of these attributes or skills find ways to acquire them and then add them to your resume.
20. What to Include
Your resume should obviously include your work experience and education. What about all the other little details? Objectives: No Objectives are almost always a waste of space. Let’s dissect this example of a typical objective: “Experienced technical leader with a bias for action seeking product management role in a fast- paced growing company.” The “bias for action” part is subjective and a claim anyone can make. The “experienced” description would be clear from the candidate’s resume. The description of the company doesn’t help either. You’re applying to this company; you are by definition interested in it whether it’s fast paced or not. Objectives are just a verbose way of describing the role you’re applying for. There is no need to state what will already be clear from your application. Summary: Rarely With few exceptions a summary is rarely useful. If your resume is sufficiently concise it already is a summary. There’s no need to re-summarize it in paragraph form. Moreover most summaries are laden with fluffy subjective personal descriptions such as “dynamic” and “action-oriented.” These carry little weight in the eyes of the reader. Occasionally summaries can highlight specific accomplishments or responsibilities that might otherwise not jump out at the reader. However this case is unusual. A proper design can almost always make your highlights readily apparent. Skills: As Needed You might want to include a skills section on your resume particularly if you have programming skills or experience with design software. Skip obvious skills such as Microsoft Word. Listing this as a skill communicates only that you know how to open a file edit it
