How to Write a Project Manager Resume That Gets You Hired

Writing a perfect resume is one of the most important “projects” you’ll do as a project manager. Nail it, and you will make a great first impression and seal your role as a project manager with your preferred company.

In this article, you’ll learn how to write a project manager resume that impresses hiring managers.

Project Manager Resume Examples

How to Write a Project Manager Resume That Gets You Hired

When finding a job as a project manager, you’ll compete with other candidates for your recruiter’s attention. To help you win, we’ve created nine steps you can use to write your project manager resume.

Use the right resume layout.

Most recruiters like reverse chronological resumes.

Besides having an orderly work history with the most recent job displayed first, chronological resumes let recruiters identify gaps in a candidate’s work history and spot any unrelated experiences. Here’s how that looks:

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In certain scenarios, different layouts like the functional and combination resume might be ideal. While functional resumes highlight your most relevant skills, combination resumes let you show both your skills and work experience.

Below are segments of people whose resumes might fit the functional and combination layouts:

– Project managers who haven’t worked in the industry for a while.
– Individuals who want to transition into a project manager role.
– People who changed careers multiple times.
– Recent graduate project managers.
– Individuals who job hop frequently.
– Freelance project managers.

Irrespective of your resume layout, you’ll want to limit unnecessary whitespace by using columns when writing your resume. This allows you to cut down the number of pages for your resume.

Using colors to segment each section of your resume is also a best practice that makes it easier for recruiters to navigate to specific sections.

Pro Tips:
– Make your resume scannable by using bullet points.
– Try to fit your resume into one or two pages with font sizes 11-12 for body text and 14-16 for section headings.
– Use the best resume fonts like Times New Roman and Helvetica to make your resume readable.
– Save your resume in PDF format, so it stays the same on all devices used by recruiters.
– Use resume templates to save time when picking a format.

Add your contact information.

How recruiters choose to contact candidates varies. Some may prefer using social media. Others may want to call or email. For this reason, add all of your contact information to your resume.

This includes your phone number, email address, location, and links to your social media profiles.

Pro Tips:
– Include the country code to your phone number. This makes it easy for hiring managers to contact you if they’re not in your country. For instance, if you’re in the US, enter the US country code (+1) like this +1 XXX-XYZ-XXXX.
– Have an account on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter so that recruiters can contact you using their preferred social media platform.

Write a punchy resume summary.

After your name, your resume summary is what most recruiters will read next. You need to write it well. In fact, treat your resume summary like a news headline.

Why?

If it’s interesting, it’ll grab the recruiter’s attention, and they’ll keep reading to learn more about you.

Here are some tips for writing a captivating resume summary:

– Use industry buzzwords.
– Mention your years of experience.
– State your most relevant certification.
– Ensure your resume summary is descriptive.
– Keep your resume summary short (3 to 5 lines).
– Be specific when talking about professional outcomes.
– Mention a few of your relevant project management skills.

Here’s an example of an interesting resume summary from Milo Cruz, CMO of Freelance Writing Jobs.

Ensure you use the right keywords.

Recruiters often use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to filter unfit resumes. They do this by scanning lots of resumes for keywords that relate to the job description.

After the scan, the ATS software recommends the top applicants, enabling recruiters to reduce the number of candidates they need to interview.

Put another way, a recruiter may not see your project manager resume if an ATS software screens it out because it lacks job-specific keywords. To prevent this, here are some keywords to remember when creating your project manager resume.

52 Project Manager Resume Keywords:
– Agile
– Waterfall
– Scrum
– PMP certification
– Stakeholder management
– Budget management
– Team management
– Effective communication
– Project planning
– Change management
– Leadership engagement
– Resource allocation
– Project management software
– Project scheduling
– Issue resolution
– Scope management
– Project coordination
– Project tracking
– Vendor management
– Negotiation
– Daily stand-ups
– MS Office Suite
– Forecasting
– Contract management
– Project status report
– Milestone tracking
– Resource planning
– Change control
– Project initiation
– Schedule tracking
– Budget tracking
– Project execution
– Performance reporting
– Project review
– Process improvement
– Risk mitigation
– Quality assurance
– Resource optimization
– Budget optimization
– Analytical
– Conflict resolution
– Jira
– Asana
– Data analysis
– Deliverables
– Project evaluation
– Cost-benefit analysis
– Team building
– Project risk identification
– Project risk analysis
– Prince 2
– PMP

Pro Tips:
– Get creative, and try to use the same keywords in the job description.
– If a keyword appears multiple times in a job description, try to use it in your resume.

Discuss relevant results in your work experience.

When writing your work experience, you must show what you can bring to the table by being specific about what you achieved in previous roles.

If you’re a new or transitioning project manager, you can talk about what you’ve done in other areas of your life or your former industry.

The bottom line is that recruiters want to see how your former results relate to the open role. The best way to do this is to get specific and quantify everything.

Consider the following questions:

– How long did a project last?
– When did a project start and end?
– What percentage of goal deadlines did you achieve?
– What’s the exact amount of budget you worked with?
– How many people did you work within your team?
– How much revenue did you help generate?

These questions have numerical elements. Numbers help you get specific, and that’s what project management is all about.