How to write a sales resume for a product manager

A product manager is at the intersection of business, design and technology. Usually, professionals who become product managers have a relevant background in one or more of these areas, although this is not mandatory. The Product Manager is responsible for ensuring that the team creates a great product. You could say that the product manager (sometimes called Product Owner) is like a mini-CEO, because he or she has holistic responsibility for the product, from the big picture to the smallest details.

‍The duties of a salesperson and their area of responsibility may vary, depending on the niche business, but in general sales profession Includes:

• researching market trends and analyzing competitors;
• interviewing clients to better understand their problems;
• Analyzing product data and looking for growth points;
• working with the product backlog (task list), describing and prioritizing product functional requirements for the team;
• Meetings with the team to plan and solve problems;
• presentations, meetings with investors and stakeholders (people who have certain requirements or interests in the product);
• strategic planning, formation of a long-term vision for the product;
• and so on.

Next, we will look at how to write a product manager resume competently to increase your chances of getting hired by the best company. 

Why it's important to take the time to write your CV

Each product manager should have his or her own vision of the final product. Therefore, a product manager's CV a priori should not be formulaic. Very often in a CV, applicants for a position trivially list the key skills of a product manager and talk about their past experience. But the skills and experience themselves are not that important. A potential employer is interested in facts and arguments. It is better to show how much the company will earn or what benefits it will get if it hires you as a product manager.

How to write a good CV for a product manager

Quite often, product managers include all past responsibilities and career achievements in their CV. But a CV that is too "overloaded" is also a bad thing. The main task of a good CV is to secure a place at the interview, not to tell you everything. So it's important to present your CV like a spoiler for a film, not an exhaustive presentation of everything you're capable of.

To make a really salesy resume for a product manager that the HR department will love, you need to follow these steps:

1. Adapt your CV to the company's niche. Employers are usually looking for product managers who already have experience in their niche: e-commerce, gambling, betting, fintech, marketing and others. Therefore, you must show that you understand the market and the product, know the specifics of the business.
2. Focus on results. Resumes should include specific, measurable results with metrics and numbers if possible. Remember, employers care about margins, launch dates, ROI, CRR, sales volume, number of purchases, not just a vague list of past responsibilities. So, your goal is to craft a resume that focuses on specific accomplishments. For example, this should include facts like: reduced advertising costs by 10%, increased sales by 35%, etc.
3. Demonstrate your technical skills. Be sure to include in your CV your experience with the tools of the sell-side: Google Analytics, Amplitude, Tableau, Notion, Power BI, Figma, MS Office, Jira, etc. You can do this in the skills section or by mentioning them in the context of realized cases you have previously worked on.
4. Attach a cover letter to your resume. Many employers will not even open a CV without a cover letter. Here you can briefly write about your motivation to become a part of this particular company, provide the brightest cases, analyze the market and give some recommendations (proactive approach). 

When writing your CV, be concise, write simply and clearly, double-check the text for spelling mistakes and typos.

As you can see, writing a really good product manager resume is not easy. But it's even harder to create unique products. Isn't it? 

What HR managers pay attention to

On average, recruiters spend about 20 seconds of their time reviewing one CV, after which the applicant is screened out or invited for an interview. Therefore, it is very important to write a competent CV: structured, salesy, without water and unnecessary information. 

When looking for a product manager, even the most competent recruiters are not able to check all the hard and soft skills of a candidate, which will be useful at the new place of work. That is why recruiters do not assess what a person has done before, but what he or she has achieved, for example:

• relevant experience in a particular field;
• knowledge of the technologies on the basis of which the product is built;
• any individual skills of the candidate, etc.

What hard and soft skills should be mentioned in a CV for a product manager with experience

When preparing a resume, it is important for an experienced product manager to demonstrate their importance, emphasize skills that will help interact with a team of designers, programmers, marketers:

1. Strategic skills - market research, identifying the pains and needs of the CA.
2. Ability to use popular analytics tools.
3. Marketing Skills.
4. UX and UI design skills.
5. Engineering skills (computer technology and coding)

In addition, emphasize your managerial skills, your ability to rally a team around common goals and find solutions to emergencies. The best product manager resume examples are those that feature successful case studies, because the quality of your work determines the outcome. It is also important that the content of the resume is well optimized, not containing more than five or six points per position, very broad wording.

What mistakes managers make on their CVs

Example of a bad CV:

1. The CV is too generalized, not tailored to the vacancy and specific niche.
2. No deepening of targeted issues, specific key achievements.
3. Focusing on methods and distractions from your direction.
4. The long-term impact of your initiatives has not been demonstrated.
5. Little attention is paid to the professional skills and knowledge of the working tools.
6. The summary is not structured: no clear section headings, no short bulleted lists.
7. Errors, inaccuracies, data discrepancies.

And so, from all of the above we can conclude that product managers need to take a product-based approach to CV development. It should be tailored to a specific vacancy, show the results of your work expressed in concrete data and figures, show your strengths and reflect your interest in the vacancy. And there is no need for unnecessary information - only 1-2 capacious, well-structured pages will allow the recruiter to understand the value of your candidature.

If you have connected your activity with the profession of a product manager, we recommend you to join the largest community in Moldova Product Management Communitywhere you can socialise, develop, learn and make useful acquaintances.