You know you have the skills for this project manager position… but how do you get them down on paper? Check out our guide for 5 essential project manager resume skills to get you started.
Here at Let’s Eat, Grandma, we’ve written over a thousand professional resumes – our business writing experts know a thing or two about resume skills, and we’re happy to share our knowledge with you.
By: Daniel Lorenzo | Content Marketing Manager at Let’s Eat, Grandma
As a project manager, you get things done.
You wear a variety of hats to manage deadlines, respond to feedback, and lead a team through tough development stages, all while keeping the client happy. You have not only technical know-how, but also valuable soft skills to motivate and manage people.
Now, how do you explain all of that in as few words as possible on your resume?
Most people agree that every resume needs a skills section. However, it can be tough to tell what skills deserve to be listed on your resume. It’s likely also tough to phrase some of your duties as a single word that you can list as a skill.
To get you started thinking of skills to list, we’ve rounded up a list of 5 great project manager resume skills from among the hundreds of resumes we’ve worked on that you should definitely consider including.
5 Essential Project Manager Resume Skills
#1: Budgeting
If you’re managing a project, you’re also going to be handling the project’s budget. List this skill to show the hiring manager you can be trusted with a large quantity of money and know how to distribute it effectively.
#2: Risk Management
Ever heard of Murphy’s Law? It states that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
This rarely applies in a field more than in project management, where potential mishaps always abound. Risks are a non-negotiable of any long-term project, so you need to prove that you know how to identify them, plan for them, and handle them when they arise.
#3: Negotiation
As a project manager, you’ll be doing a lot of negotiating. Whether you’re talking budgets with your management or project specifications with the client, you need to know how to bargain to get the necessary resources, time, and payment to deliver a great final product.
#4: Leadership & Management
There’s a subtle distinction between these two skills, and project managers need both.
Leadership refers to broad, people-focused abilities, such motivating your team, resolving conflicts, and other qualities that well… make a good leader.
Management, on the other hand, refers to more nitty-gritty abilities like scheduling, delegating tasks, and making sure the team is on track.
#5: Specific Methodologies
List the names of environments/methods/frameworks you use to develop projects, especially as the job description calls for them.
This especially applies to you, IT and Software project managers – make sure you have Agile, Scrum, Waterfall or whatever other environments/methodologies you’ve worked in (and definitely list if you’re a Certified Scrum Master or Project Management Professional).
2 Things to Remember
At the end of the day, the only one who knows the best skills to feature on your resume is you. Make sure of 2 things when writing your skills section:
1: You’re pulling skills straight from the job description. The only surefire way is to make sure you have the right skills listed is to thoroughly read through the description for each job you apply for. And we mean this for every. single. different. job. It sounds tedious, we know, but tailoring your resume skills to each job posting is the only way to make sure it passes through those pesky ATS systems and gets seen by the hiring manager.
2: Be honest. That being said, remember what you learned in kindergarten: honesty is the best policy. You can’t work with what you don’t have, so if you’re don’t feel familiar enough with a skill to list it, then don’t. Fudging your knowledge is not worth having your bluff called later and getting fired from the job. (The best rule of thumb for this: if you’d be uncomfortable answering questions about it in an interview, take it off.)
If you find a skill you’re missing is found in descriptions across the board, consider taking a class on a platform like uDemy or CodeAcademy. Even if you can’t get a certification before the interview, you can at least mention you’re taking coursework in it!
You know you have the skills to pay the bills. Now go make sure your resume does, too!
For even more resume help, visit our homepage and upload your resume for a FREE Career Score. See how our business writing experts can get your materials in shape and land you your dream job!
