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Example Project Manager Resume - Browse more resume templates and build a stand-out resume
Top tactics to create the best Project Manager resume
People seem to underestimate how much of an impact a great project manager can make.
But recruiters are certainly not one of these people. The cost of hiring the wrong person is too high, and every project manager resume will be evaluated with scientific accuracy.
Including yours.
Is your project management resume good enough to convince recruiters with 10+ years of professional experience that you are better than hundreds of other candidates?
We worked with project managers and recruiters at Fortune 500 companies to make sure.
This guide will teach you:
- 4 great professional project manager resume examples you can customize
- The best PMP resume sections to include in your resume
- Creative ways to write your introduction and keep hiring managers glued to your resume
- How to use your resume to prove your worth and highlight your management expertise
Project manager resume example
Looking for related sample resumes?
Sample IT Project Manager Resume
Resume highlights:
- 9 years of relevant experience
- Led and mentored teams and three different companies
- Hands-on Agile and Scrum experience
- PMP certified Project Manager
Example Assistant Project Manager Resume
Resume highlights:
- 10 years of work experience as a project manager in Agile teams
- Project Manager Professional Certification
- Bachelor degree in adjacent to project management industry
Sample Technical Project Manager Resume
Resume highlights:
- Shows career progression from assistant to senior PM leader
- Certified Scrum Master and Agile professional
- Experience with managing multiple projects within the companies
Browse more Project Management resume guides written by our experts here:
- Program Manager Resume
- Program Analyst Resume
- Project Analyst Resume
- Scrum Master Resume
- Product Manager Resume
- Operations Manager Resume
- Systems Analyst Resume
- Change Management Resume
- Management Resume
- IT Manager resume
- IT Project Manager resume
How to write a Project Manager resume
Project managers’ main job is to organize and motivate others to achieve success within the company. The goal of your project manager resume is to show your value and highlight the complex day-to-day tasks you’ve done in simple terms.
How can you show all that on one page?
The irony is that it starts like any other great project: with a good plan and a decent layout.
What about your resume layout? Which one works best for project managers?
First, let's take a look at the three most popular resume formats:
- Chronological
- Functional
- Combination (chronological+functional)
Chronological resume is the gold standard of resumes. The experience (listed from most recent to oldest), is the centerpiece.
Functional formats focus more on skills and the tasks you can do. They're used in resumes where the job requires a strong portfolio or examples of past projects.
Combination formats use the two together.
Here's the deal...
Resume formats all depend on where you are in your career.
Make your own project manager resume sample.
Then, choose thesections that will help you craft a strong resume that gets you hired.
Add the following resume parts:
- Header
- Summary
- Experience
- Soft and hard skills
- Education
- Certificates
Making acreative resume might be a great idea. But, a pro has to make the design.
Or else, it will backfire on you.
If you’re using Enhancv, you’ll take advantage of carefully measured white space,readable headings andbold resume fonts.
How far back should your resume go? The answer ties with theresume length. Aone-page resume works well if you’ve under 10 years of experience. Otherwise, go with atwo-pager project manager resume template.
Finally,save your resume as a PDF. Word docs can scramble even the most basic of formats.
Project Manager Resume Header: How To Grab Recruiter’s Attention Quickly
Your resume header is the section where you give a glimpse into who you are.
You’ll include the most important details about you.
But at the same time, you’ll encourage HRs to consider you as a worthy candidate by:
- Staying relevant to what’s necessary to the project manager role;
- Giving them a chance to learn more about you in further sections.
Let’s take a look at some examples of project manager resume headers:
First, the email address looks like a random gaming alias. It’s not going to work in a professional environment.
Second, the title "Project Manager" isn't so specific to the application. Include a keyword to differentiate yourself from others.
For example, you could use:
- Senior Project Manager
- Healthcare Project Manager
- Pharmaceutical Project Manager
- Construction Project Manager
- Energy Project Manager
- Software Development Project Manager
- Marketing Project Manager
Third,don't include your full address, if the application didn't ask for it.
Now, let's see a better example.
It's more personalized to your job and gives HRs a better idea of who you are.
If you've noticed, we've included aLinkedIn profile link. You have to leave the door open for HRs to learn more about you if they're interested in an interview.Should you add a photo in your resume header? It depends. Check out expert tips in ourShould I Include My Photo On My Resume? [Expert Advice] guide to help you make this decision.
Project Management Resume Summary: Sharing Enough Info to Get Shortlisted
Not sure what the utility of a summary in a resume is?
Your resume is a new project you're going to manage.
It starts with an inventory of your skills and resources.
Then, you set an attainable goal to work on within a specific timeframe.
Your project management resume summary helps you tell that story to your recruiter.
So, how do you go from having separate sentences to writing anoutstanding resume summary?
What hiring managers want to learn is:
- Years of experience as a project manager at different companies
- Most successful projects you worked on
- Strongest project management skills that allowed you to thrive in your past jobs
- Best results and accomplishments you achieved in your career
- Types of projects you were responsible for their implementation
To take this a step further, you’ll:
- Include precise metrics to support your claims.
- Use short, direct sentences to keep HRs interested.
- Personalize it by including specific project management keywords, skills, and achievements.
- Promote a unique value proposition after reading the job application.
Let’s take a look at some project management resume summaries:
This barely scratches the surface as to who the candidate is and what they’re up to. Instead, it makes them look too uninterested and lazy to update their resume.
Let’s make this better with a few simple changes.
Now it contains precise numbers that serve as strong evidence for your competence. And, it’s more personalized and speaks directly to the hiring manager.
But most importantly...
It features real examples of what the candidate worked on and achieved in their past job.
Finally, the question begs…
Do you need aresume objective?
We say - you don’t. A project manager is usually an experienced candidate for whom a career objective won’t do much help.
Project Management Experience on Resume: How to Make This Section Work Every Time
To get hired, you must prove that you’re the best project manager the company can recruit. But you can only do that by making the evaluation process easy for them.
But to do that, you must first craft an outstanding experience section for your project manager resume. It must be filled with details about successful projects and achievements.
At the same time, it should also show you can:
- Gain insight into business needs and develop practical solutions to meet them
- Ensure effective project planning, including budgets, execution, and delivery time
- Develop project communication plans between company departments and ensure their execution
- Manage internal teams across different departments and collaborate with managers within the company
2 Project Manager Job Description Examples
Notice how shallow the example above is.
Although it shows some of the tasks you handle, it doesn’t highlight any of the results. It also includes basic job duties that any candidate can copy from resumes online.
That keeps you away from getting hired.
Think about it this way:
If a recruiter is willing to cut you some slack, they may think that you’re lazy. They’ll assume that you didn’t invest much in creating your resume.
But it could be worse.
The responsibilities listed above don’t show achievements and skills. And that makes you look unqualified.
This is not how you’ll get hired.
We’ll show you a better example of how you can improve your experience section.
Let’s make some simple tweaks.
The second example shows enough details about your past work.
It demonstrates more metrics and examples, which enhances trust and shows credibility. That makes you look like a professional project manager who contributed a lot to the company.
Here’s how you can do in your PMP resume:
- Usedirect action verbs to highlight the work you achieved as a project manager.
- Feature relevant, strong project manager skills that are most required in the job application.
- Include precise numbers and business results to showcase the value you provided.
Need more work experience section tips? Go through our guide here:How to Describe Your Work Experience on Resume.
Student or entry-level project manager? Here are some tips
Let's be honest here for a second:
Having experience is a plus to your resume. It makes HRs more confident in recruiting you.
But...
HRs understand well that job success isn't only about experience. Many attributes can make a difference in an applicant.
Here's the deal:
The hiring company is looking for an entry-level project manager to handle specific tasks. You'll be able to find more details about that in the job application.
Read it, identify those duties, and prepare to include them in your resume.
Now, to be convincing, feature the specific skills that allow you to perform those tasks. And support that with your educational background and unique certificates.
We'll teach you in the rest of this guide how you can do all that.
Project Management Resume Skills
Use your project manager skills section to prove that you're everything HRs are looking for.
Since project managers cover a wide field of responsibilities, it doesn't help to list a handful of skills that are of the same nature.
You must pick the most relevant skills to the position you're applying to. Then use them to show that you can guarantee objectives, ensure quality, mitigate risk, etc.
So, let's be smart about what skills you should feature in your resume:
14 Technical skills on a PMP resume
- Project development
- Project Management Software
- Budgeting
- Project Schedule
- Data processing
- Microsoft Office: Word, MS Excel, Project, PowerPoint
- Visio
- ProjectLink
- Oracle Project Accounting
- Clarity
- ServiceNow
- Project Management Tools
- Risk Management
- Waterfall
- Scrum
- Project Deployment
As you may have noticed, these core skills are specific to the job duties of any project manager.
Of course, you shouldn’t list them all in your resume.
Try the recruiter’s POV. Then identify which skills are most required for the job you’re applying to.
17 important soft skills to include in your resume for Project Manager job
- Leadership skills
- Negotiation
- Communication Skills
- Critical Thinking
- Strategic project planning & Project scope
- Multitasking
- Detail-oriented
- Analytical skills
- Team management
- Customer Focus
- Interpersonal Skills
- Business Analysis
- Decision Making
- Problem Solving
- Resource Allocation
- Vendors Management
- Compliance
- Project Budgeting
These skills are a must-have for any applicant that’s serious about getting hired.
You can be smart about listing them on a resume by not limiting yourself to the skills section.
Find ways to showcase your best skills in other sections of your resume.
For example:
You can include keywords within your experience section. Or list your skills in your summary section to capture the HR’s interest.
Also, don’t lean too hard on buzzwords. If you decide touse buzzwords in your Project Manager resume, make sure to use them in the right context and in the right place.
Project Manager Resume Education
Project management is a role that requires lots of human interaction, flexibility, and creativity.
And you don’t learn this anywhere in school.
So you might ask:
Why do I need to include an education section in my resume anyway?
Think of it this way:
If you’re the hiring manager and had to cut a list from 1000s of candidates down to a dozen ones, what would your criteria be?
You’ll now focus on the secondary features of the applicants.
You want to hire someone who has all that, plus somerelevant educational background.
Your resume needs an education section. Of course, you won’t detail out everything you learned since primary school. In fact, you’ll do the exact opposite.
You’ll list your highest school degree, the university or college you went to, and the duration you spent there.
Check out this example:
All in all, the required degree depends on the industry the hiring company operates in.
Most often, those companies ask for a Bachelor’s in management or business. But sometimes they only hire candidates from technical fields such as computer science and IT.
Project Manager Resume Certificates: Which Ones to Prioritize?
It doesn't matter how strong your resume is. Featuring certifications in project management on a resume is always a plus.
It shows that you've invested lots of time to boost your career and learn new skills. And it also proves that you're experienced in your work.
But the most important thing is this:
It makes the hiring decision easier on recruiters and allows them to feel good about their choices.
Because...
If lots of trusted organizations are vouching for a candidate, it's a good thing to trust their judgment.
So:
What are the best project management certificates to feature on your resume?
Top 10 certificates for your PMP resume
- Project Management Professional (PMP) from Project Management Institute (PMI)
- Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)
- Prince2
- CompTIA
- Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
- Certified Project Management Practitioner (CPMP)
- Master Project Manager (MPM)
- Lean management
- Six sigma
- Kaizen
Key takeaways for making an outstanding PM resume
- Read the job description carefully. Understand what the hiring company is looking for, then craft your resume accordingly
- Use your resume header to grab attention and prove your competence
- Highlight your greatest accomplishments throughout your resume to remind people of your worth
- Use your experience section to feature your relevant expertise in cross-functional teams, and strongest skills
- When faced with competition, add an education and certificates sections to stand out from other
