The Product Resume | A Start To Finish Guide 📝
Writing a resume is not easy. Writing a resume for a new industry is even harder. Let's change that with this article!
A Quick Note
Hey everyone, thanks for taking the time to read February’s final issue of Tyler Talk’s Product. I want to let everyone know that the newsletter has gotten to over 200 readers, it’s awesome to see this newsletter grow so fast and I’m excited to continue to see more aspiring PMs join the conversation! As this metaphorical table continues to grow, I want to ensure I’m helping those that dedicate their time to reading these blogs. Since this issue's topic is resumes, if you need a resume review, please feel free to message me on LinkedIn and I’ll try my best to review as many as my time allows. I’ve been lucky enough to be put into a position where I have reviewed a ton of student resumes as well as gathered best practices from PMs in the industry, and I want to give that insight back to the readers that read the newsletter. Anyways, hope you enjoy this issue!
Hope you learn something and thanks for stopping by <3 !
Why Do Resumes Matter?
How can you get a product job without first getting the interview? The resume is your first step in making a great impression. One of my biggest hurdles when trying to break into product management was converting my consulting resume to a product/tech resume. You may be thinking that a good resume should work in all industries; however, due to the increased specialization of each industry, that may no longer be the case.
If you need resume help, this guide is the aggregation of all the tips I’ve learned throughout my product journey! Although I hope this guide helps in creating a perfect product resume, please understand that these tactics may change in the future as I find more insights throughout my (hopefully long) product career.
Here are the section’s we’ll cover today:
🧠 Header 🧠
The header’s purpose is to introduce the information that a recruiter needs to know to contact you. Typically, a good header must communicate your name, contact information , and portfolio link (if you have one). The header is not meant to be flashy, the use of colour is fine as long as it’s not distracting.
I personally split my header into the following format:
(1) I put my name (it’s as simple as that). One thing to note that I’ve been guilty of in the past is making my name too large. My recommendation is to get someone you trust to take a look at it to test the readability of your font size.
(2) To the side of my name is a table (1 x 4) that contains my website, email, phone number, and LinkedIn. A cool tip to make it stand out to you is the alignment and logos used -adding a bit of spice. Creating a table in Word and making it white helps alignment become almost automatic, while the symbols came from FlatIcon.
The header is the most self-explanatory part of the resume. However, it can be easy to mess up without the tricks that make frustrating aspects, (such as alignment) easier.
🧑🏽🎓 Education 🧑🏽🎓
A big disclaimer for this section is if you are an experienced professional, you should position your education towards the end of your resume, as it becomes a lower priority to a recruiter at that point in your career. However, if you are a student, like me, you’re going to want to make that the first thing that appears below the header.
My education section is simple; I include my degree, specialization, university, graduation date, GPA (if your GPA puts you in a more positive light), and Dean’s List. In the past, I have included relevant coursework, however, due to a lack of page space I’ve opted to take it out in exchange for more room to talk about my professional experiences. It’s a personal choice, but I’ve also talked with recruiters who say that, it is hard to understand what skills come from a less technically focused course such as Digital Marketing.
🧑🏽💻 Professional Experience 🧑🏽💻
In my opinion, the professional experience section can be a very ambiguous part of your resume to compile. Does all my experience belong there? How many bullet points per experience? How do I structure each point? Do I always need metrics? What makes these questions even more confusing is that answers vary by industry.
Does All My Experience Belong on Professional Experience?
The answer to this question depends on how much experience you have. First, do you have enough experience to be selective? As a university student, you may only have one or two professional experiences, and that is completely okay. In this case, I would advise you to include all of your experiences (this includes club and leadership experiences). However, if you are a tenured professional with a ton of non-product related experience, you should select which experiences best relate to product manager skills. What I’ve done with my relevant experiences is create Entity Relationship Diagrams that shows the relation between previous experiences and PM skills. Here is a basic example with some of my experiences and some common PM skills:
How Many Points Should I Put Per Experience?
I’ve seen resumes where there are six bullet points per experience, while others may only have one point. My general rule of thumb is to have around three to four points for your most recent experiences and as you move down to older experiences providing two points will suffice. The rationale I’ve heard about this methodology is that recruiters will focus more heavily on your most recent experiences so fleshing them out makes the most sense. Therefore, your two points used for the older experiences should be used to highlight your most relevant achievements in that role.
How to Write a Resume Point?
Having selected experiences that relate to core PM skills, I personally follow a similar format to CAR (Context, Action, Result) called CRA (this does not stand for Canadian Revenue Agency, for all my Canada readers). CRA, in this case, stands for Context, Result, and Action. From previous experiences and numerous resume critiques, I've found that introducing the result of an experience before the action taken is preferred to the classic CAR format.
Context - First, provide context to the experience that you are trying to showcase. I do this by starting the point with a past tense action verb (here is a list of great product management ones) that describes the initial situation (keep this short). In the example above, I wanted to exemplify leadership during the development of a product.
Result - Next, you’re going to want to emphasize the impact you’ve made. In the past, I’ve heard from students that they do not know how to quantify impact nor do they know how to get that information. A practice I’ve done in previous internships is talking to my manager and asking what the current state is of key metrics (ie. Sales, Click-Through Rate, or MAU). As well, asking how these metrics have changed once I have delivered on a project. Results are incredibly important as they help quantify the experiences you are trying to showcase.
Action - Congrats you’re two-thirds of the way to making a great point! The last step before you finish your resume is to state what actions you took to achieve your project’s results. This can include working with software engineers, creating product requirement documents, or leading sprints. If you’re having a hard time coming up with a list of actions that helped you achieve the experience you’re describing, then you may want to reflect on all the possible steps you took between starting your project and launching it!
After following the CRA format, you’ll hopefully have something to this effect (formatting here is my personal preference so please feel free to change it if you wish):
👷🏽 Side Projects 👷🏽
One thing that many PM intern job descriptions state is their want for candidates that have an entrepreneurial spirit. Side projects are a perfect opportunity to showcase this. A common misconception for side projects within product is that they have to be coding/technical related projects. This could not be further from the truth. Remember, although it’s great to have products that showcase technical skills, a PM will do several non-technical activities that can be the basis for a side project. Here are some possible side project ideas below:
Defining the core metric for UberEats
Creating a PRD (Product Requirement Document) for a new product feature
Re-imagining the UI/UX of the Apple Photos app (Leverage Figma if you can)
Creating a no-code app for your friends
Once you create your side project, you’re going to want to follow the CRA format to showcase it on your resume. However, how do you quantify the results of a side project? The answer is to create visibility for what you’ve created. A very easy way that I quantify my side projects is to upload them as a post on LinkedIn and have my result be the comments, reactions, and follow-up chats that occured due to my side project. If you happen to create a no-code app, you may want to quantify the amount of downloads or users your app brings in. Here’s an example of a side project I did for Spotify and the way I showcased it on my resume:
🔧 Skills and Misc. 🔧
For technical industries such as engineering,the Skills and Misc. section should preferably be placed at the top of your resume as it gives recruiters an insight into the tech stack you are comfortable with. However, from conversations I’ve had with PMs, it seems that there is no hard rule on where to put this section. Personally, I put it at the end, as I believe everything above has more value to offer.
In this Skills and Misc. section I include: product skills, coding languages, product manager tools, and interests.
Why Put Interests?
It’s very easy to understand why my product, languages, and interests lines are included within the Skills and Misc. section. However, very often I get asked why I include interests on my resume. It has nothing to do with the job, which is true, but I’ve found that in every interview someone will ask me about the interests I included. I’ve connected with my interviewers based on their favourite autobiography, the resurgence of vinyl, and what makes a great bonfire. Although I believe it's important to show yourself off as a great PM, something has to be said about presenting yourself outside of the product space. You’re more than just a product manager.
Putting It All Together and Last Minute Tips
With all the tips given in this article, I hope you’re able to build a resume that gets you into the product space! I also wish that each section provided you with something new that you can implement into your resume. But before I go, here are some last minute tips that I think may prove valuable in your resume-crafting journey:
Use the ruler to help with alignment and creating the needed space to create your resume (consider tools like pre-saved margins)
If you have the time, create tailored points that relate to the job posting that you’re applying for (ie. Leveraging skills and words that relate to your existing experiences)
Provide links to your project for easy access for recruiters
Keep your resume to one page (especially for those early into their careers)
A rule of thumb for editing, I get 3-5 edits from other people before I consider sending out my resume
Use a clear and legible font, I use SF Pro Display, however, in the tech community, a go to font I’ve seen is Helvetica light
☕️ Hey, Thanks for Being at the Table! ☕️
Thanks for reading this half-month’s issue. I’m going to go make some coffee. Drop by again some time soon!
~ Tyler
This guide has been really helpful, never in my 1.5 years of making product management resume, have I seen my work from this context, thanks Tyler for this
Top tier resume guide!