No matter what type of resume you’re creating, remember that your resume is how you show off your best skills. But this can be a bit complicated. If you have years of experience to show for it, it can be a daunting task to showcase all the reasons you’re perfect for a project manager job in a concise resume. The good news is that with the right guidance, you can prepare for any job title, whether it’s an entry-level job or one that requires a bit more experience. Here’s how you can prepare your resume for a project manager position.
A Project Management Professional (PMP) ensures that your company completes successful projects regularly. It typically requires assessing team members’ skills, assigning them to the proper tasks, and ensuring that the team has the right time, requirements, and knowledge of the project and its methodologies. In short, a great project manager can help a team do its job more effectively and productively.
Project managers need a wide variety of skills and qualifications to maximize the usage of a professional resume. No matter what type of project manager you’re planning to be, from an IT project manager to a construction project manager and beyond, here’s how to fill out your skills section to get a hiring manager’s attention.
You need hard skills (skills gained through education and training) in a project manager role. Here are a few to consider:
While hard skills are certainly important, you also need soft skills to effectively connect with your team members and clients . Here are a few of the soft skills that are most desired in project management:
Overall, both hard and soft skills are crucial if you want to create a project manager resume that a hiring manager takes seriously. List both of them on your resume.
When you go to a resume builder and decide to create your project manager resume, you need to understand the basics of resume writing.
First, you need to know which resume format you’re planning to use. The chronological format is the most common, especially for project and program managers, who usually have a lot of work history. Regardless of the format, these are usually the headings you’ll include:
Your resume header includes all your personal contact information. It may include a link to your website, links to your professional social media sites, and your phone number and email address.
At the very top of your resume, you can find the resume summary or resume objective. This is a 2-3 sentence paragraph that goes over the information presented in your resume. A resume objective, which is more common for people with less experience, will also provide an objective that you’re hoping to achieve with your resume.
In your skills section, you’ll include a handful of your top skills. Focus on skills that the job description specifically requires, as well as skills that you can back up with previous experience, awards, and achievements.
Your work experience section will typically include up to the last 10 years of experience, listed in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent jobs first. If you have more than 10 years of experience, you can list it on your LinkedIn profile, or mention it in your cover letter, especially if your less recent positions don’t feature relevant skills and achievements.
The education section will usually be at the end of your resume. It includes all professional education you’ve completed, including any specialized coursework or certification programs.
Most resume templates will include all of these sections. And some templates also include extra sections for qualifications or certifications for people who feel their resume could benefit from providing this additional information. If you want to learn more about how to write all of these resume sections, check out the ResumeNerd resume examples. You can find other project manager resumes to improve your resume.
It's also important that you write a great cover letter to go along with your resume. No matter how great your resume is, a cover letter can help you go over even more information about your work experience and why you fit a specific project manager job description. You can use the ResumeNerd cover letter builder to create your cover letter.
Taking classes can often help you develop more relevant skills and make your job search a little easier. Consider learning how to use different types of project management software or looking at classes from a project management organization like the Project Management Institute (PMI). Additionally, remember that you’ll improve these skills as you use them more often. The more project management experience you have, the better you’ll be at using those skills.
Project managers typically have lots of skills and work experience to show off. If you want to convince a recruiter that you’re the perfect applicant for a specific job description, you need to write a resume that showcases all the reasons you’re so good at doing your job. Resume writing skills are an important part of showcasing your skills, and the best resume for a project manager can have a measurable impact on whether or not you get the job.
If you’re looking for a project manager resume example, look no further than ResumeNerd. At ResumeNerd, you can find a wide variety of resume examples, including examples for all sorts of different job titles, including project manager. When you look at a project manager resume sample, think about the specific skills being featured, the way skills are utilized in previous positions, and important certifications that are listed. This can help narrow your focus on your own resume.
