82: The Perfect Product Manager Resume

The perfect product manager resume – does it exist?

It seems like about every 10th question on any product management chat board is “can you review my resume?”

Is there a “perfect product manager resume?” Not really. But there are ways to make your resume a lot better. Many people don’t know these things.

And it comes from thinking like a product manager

First, think of your customer – the hiring manager

Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. What does he or she devoutly wish for in this process? To find the one unicorn out of many who is best suited to this job. And to not make a mistake and hire a donkey in unicorn clothing.

The structure

* Contact info

* Blurb

* Experience (and the all important bullet points!)

* Skills

Every bullet point should be a story

This is a bit hard to achieve, but at least make sure that some of your bullet points reflect your fantastic accomplishments.

The goal of your bullet points?

* Highlight your meaningful achievements – meaningful transformations you enabled by solving problems worth solving that only you could solve

* Pique interest – “Oh, they did that? I’d like to learn more about how they did it.”

* Each bullet point is a little mini-story, for which you have a bigger story you can tell in the interview

* The story is “There was a problem. I solved it by doing X. Good things resulted.”

* The bullet is “Made good things result by doing X.”

My online course on “Telling Your Own Story”

To learn a lot more about how to tell your own stories, check out my online course.

I also have a lot of articles on the Secret Product Manager Handbook blog about storytelling, such as the following.

* The Secret to Telling a Customer Story That Closes Deals

Three things you can start doing today to get closer to the perfect product manager resume

* Polish your stories and create great bullet points.

* Again, I recommend my online course at alltheresponsibility.com/stories for more guidance on this.

* Work on your blurb.

* What I am, what I’ve done, and what makes me interesting.

* Do a little work on your “whole product” – your LinkedIn, your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

* If you’ve written articles, given talks, been interviewed, make sure those are listed on your LinkedIn Featured section.

Let me know how I’m doing

You can leave a comment below, which I’d love and I always respond.

Don’t forget to subscribe!

If you want to help me out, and more importantly, help other product managers find and enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on your podcast system of choice. And consider giving me a review on iTunes or “starring” the episode on your player...