Product Manager Resume Examples (for Google, Meta, etc.)

Product manager resume

Product Management is a hot field. Companies such as Google, Meta, or Amazon, routinely receive 300+ applications for a single position.

To increase your chances of getting that PM interview, use our step-by-step guide to writing a top product manager resume.

As well as tips and expert insights, it includes 5 REAL EXAMPLES of resumes that won product manager candidates offers or interviews at Google and elsewhere.

Here’s an overview of what we’ll cover:

Let’s get into it.

Get expert feedback on your resume with an ex-FAANG product manager

1. Defining your PM skillset

Before you start writing your resume, you need to think about the type of product manager you are, or want to be.

In recent years, the product manager role has become increasingly specialized, with positions such as “Growth PM" or “Data PM” now common. After all, at a large company, it’s simply impossible to be the “know-everything” type of PM that can exist at smaller companies.

The excellent article “The Growing Specialization of Product Management” by Reforge outlines 4 PM specializations:

  • Core PMs, who focus mostly on product feature work and are sharply focused on solving customer pain points. If you’re early into your PM career, you are probably a Core PM.
  • Growth PMs, who focus on improving the business metrics that determine a product’s success: acquisition, CAC, sign ups, free trial starts, conversion/purchase rates, monetization, ARPU, and retention.
  • Platform PMs, who focus on internal customers (e.g. engineering, operations, etc.) and scaling internal platforms and services for continued organizational growth. Most Infrastructure and Data PMs would be in this category.
  • Innovation PMs, who focus on identifying and experimenting with new opportunities to reach and expand product market fit.

It's worth thinking carefully about the type of product manager you want to position yourself as, as this will influence which skills you focus on and which achievements you highlight. We'll come back to this in section 2.

1.1 PM skills

As we discussed above, different kinds of product managers will have strengths and weaknesses in different areas. However, all PMs will typically include a mix of technical (“hard”) skills and soft skills.

Let’s step through the most important competencies in each of these two categories.

1.1.1 Technical ("hard") skills

Product development follows a standard life cycle:

  1. Identifying and planning a product opportunity
  2. Designing the product
  3. Building it
  4. Launching it to market
  5. Assessing its success to be able to iterate

Product management recruiters will be looking for candidates who demonstrate skills relevant to these five life cycle phases. While deep knowledge in every skill area is unrealistic, even for a senior product manager, you should probably aim to touch on most if not all these skills in your resume to make sure you check off all the recruiter’s boxes.

  • Strategy skills, such as carrying out user or market research, identifying and solving customer problems in past jobs, or even simply writing a strategy memo or presentation.
  • Design skills to show that you have a good enough eye for UX and UI to be able to give constructive feedback to the design team. This can mean you’ve worked with designers in the past and are used to providing feedback on UX wireframes or UI mock-ups for projects, as well as using tools such as Sketch and Figma.
  • Engineering skills to show you will understand how the engineering team will build the product and act as their voice when liaising with marketing, design, etc. List any computer science or coding experience, even if minor. Having worked with engineering teams in the past is also great to mention.
  • Digital marketing skills to show you can help the marketing team launch the product. Mention any relevant experience such as writing blog posts, designing digital paid ads, running social media channels, etc.
  • Data analytics skills to show you can assess the product success and iterate. List examples where you have set success metrics, analysed reports or written reports for stakeholders. Also include using tools such as Excel, SQL, Python, and Tableau.

1.1.2 Soft skills

In addition to strong technical skills, you’ll also need excellent soft skills. The three most important are:

  • Leadership skills, in order to influence without authority and rally your team around a common goal and plan. It’s therefore essential that you clearly highlight any experience where you’ve led or managed groups of people. If you are at the beginning of your career this can include university clubs, sports teams, or any side projects.
  • Communication skills needed to interface with multiple stakeholders: engineers, designers, senior management, etc. This means that your recruiter will pay very close attention to how you have communicated your skills and experience. A resume is a disguised communication exercise - treat it like one!
  • Organization skills to organize and prioritize the work of your team. Mention any experience you've got in delivering complex projects involving multiple stakeholders. If you have worked in an agile environment in the past, this is particularly valuable.

Remember, while some of the technical skills may not apply to your specialization, the soft skills above are essential for every product manager.

Do you need to improve on key product manager skills?

Our PM coaches can help you develop your skills, tackle problems at work, help you get promoted, and turbo-charge your career. Click here to book a 1-to-1 product management coaching session.

2. Product manager resumes that worked for Google, Uber, etc.

Before we start on how to write your resume, let's take a look at the kind of thing you should be aiming for.

2.1 Example resume 1 (Google)

The resume below belongs to Nicolas Lin, and it got him a senior product manager job at Google in April 2022.

Google senior product manager resume

This is a seriously high quality resume. Here's what Nicolas does especially well:

  • Quantifying achievements: Nicolas provides powerful metrics to make his achievements measurable and specific.
  • Action verbs: Nicolas chooses his verbs carefully. For instance, instead of just saying "launched", he writes "Initiated and launched" to show that he is someone that gets things started and finished.
  • Cherry-picking: Nicolas includes the most impressive two or three achievements from each role, no more. This gives him space to sufficiently explain each one.

2.2 Example resume 2 (Google)

This resume got Imran (not his real name) onsite interviews in July 2023 for a senior product manager role at Google.

Google pm resume example - 1

Google resume example - Imran 2

Again, this is an extremely impressive resume. Here's our feedback:

  • Quantifying achievements: Again, Imran has been very detailed and specific in quantifying his impressive achievements.
  • Length: Imran has decided to use two pages, which goes against Google's own advice, but it allows him to go into a lot of detail on the impact he has had in recent roles, as well as mentioning his previous experience as a network engineer.
  • No extracurricular. We think he could have found room for this section in order to add a touch of color and personality to the resume, but clearly Imran wanted to focus 100% on his impact at work, which is fair enough.

2.3 Example resume 3 (Uber, Grab)

This got Saras (not real name) interviews at Uber and Grab in 2023 for a Senior Product Manager role.

product manager resume part 1

2.4 Example resume 4 (Thomson Reuters)

This resume got Dhanya (not real name) PM interviews at Thomson Reuters.

product manager resume example

product manager resume example

Here's what we liked about Dhanya's resume:

  • Quantified achievements: Again, Dhanya demonstrates her impact really powerfully, clearly outlining specific and quantified examples.
  • Range of skills: Dhanya makes it easy for the reader to see that she has experience using a range of key PM skills (cross-functional collaboration, data analytics, etc.) to have an impact.
  • Context: Dhanya went to a top business school in India but it's possible a hiring manager in London might not have heard of it, so she puts it in context for them.

Here's a few things we'd consider changing:

  • Certifications: Dhanya lists a range of licences and certifications. This can help resume screening bots pick up on keywords. However, while some are generally considered important (Scrum Alliance) others less so (LinkedIN, Udacity, etc).
  • Accolades: Dhanya has some impressive accolades. However, by including weaker ones (such as a "pat on the back" award) she distracts from the better ones. It's better to cherry-pick.
  • Length: Dhanya could consider being more picky about what she includes and fitting it all one one page, as Nicolas did.

2.5 Example resume 5 (Meta, Microsoft...)

This resume got John interviews at a whole load of top companies; Meta, Microsoft, Linkedin, Robinhood, as well as with some smaller start ups.

product manager example resume - meta part 1

product manager resume example meta - part 2

We really like this resume for the following reasons:

  • John has a lot of great experience but he has clearly cherry-picked and he fits it all into one page. Everything is high impact and concise.
  • John is extremely logical in his allocation of resources. He uses a lot of bullet points for his most recent role, then progressively fewer for previous roles.
  • He adds just a couple of tiny dashes of personality with 'robotics nerd' and 'a pretty cool tech ed start up". Just enough that the reader warms to him.

2.6 Example resume 6

We've also created an example resume to illustrate our tips at each step of the writing process.

Unlike the three resumes above, this resume is not a real one. Instead, it's an amalgamation of the many high quality CVs that candidates have shared with us before going on to work at Google, Facebook and Amazon, etc.

example PM resume

The resume example above should serve as a useful guide when you’re writing yours, and you can even edit over it if you like.

Click here to download this example PM resume.

3. How to write a product manager resume (section-by-section)

Now that you’ve seen examples of what you should be aiming for, let’s go through the resume-building process, step-by-step.

3.1 Step 1: study the target company and job description

Before you start writing or editing your resume our tip is that you do some research.

Find the job specification, read it thoroughly, and use it to shape your resume in the following ways:

  • First of all, work out what type of PM the job description is looking for. The job title may simply be "Product Manager," but examine the list of responsibilities and assess whether it falls into one of the four specialization categories we listed above (Core, Growth, Platform, Innovation) or whether it’s describing a “do-everything” type.
  • Prepare to adapt your resume’s content accordingly. Focus on the product skills that are most relevant for the role. For example, if you are going for a more technical PM role, cut those public speaking achievements from your extracurricular section and replace them with that hackathon example.
  • Zoom in on a few of the responsibilities in the job description that you think are most important. Search for specific examples from your past that demonstrate experience in doing the same thing or very similar. Find the numbers to back it up where possible, so you’re ready to include this information in the work experience section later on.
  • Take note of the language used in the job description so you can, where appropriate, match specific verbs and phrases.
  • Research the company. For example, imagine you’re targeting a PM role at Facebook. Facebook has 5 core values, so you’d want to make sure that your resume transmits these values too. That might mean including a volunteering activity under Interests to show that you like to "build social value." Do the same if you’re applying for Google or Amazon.

Does all this mean you’ll need a different iteration of your resume for every PM job you target? Ideally yes, but there will be a lot of overlap, and so usually you’ll only need to make a few strategic edits.

Right, once you’ve done the research, you’ll be ready to start writing.

3.2 Step 2: Choose a layout

The design of your resume should have one objective: to convey as much information as possible in a way that is clear, easy to digest, and professional. Use our sample resume as your template, and you’ve already achieved that!

Some people add a second objective: to demonstrate strong design skills in order to stand out from the crowd and impress the recruiter.

However, we recommend treading carefully with this. Recruiters for large companies are unlikely to be impressed by a resume’s design; they’re interested in the content. Some might even be put off by a “creative” or unique design. To avoid this risk, aim to stand out through your resume’s content, not its design.

Another area of debate is length. Should you always stick to just one page?

The answer is no, not necessarily. If you’re an experienced PM, it’s fine to go to two pages, as long as all the content you’re including is strong and relevant to the role. We can confirm this because many of the candidates who use our coaching service got their FAANG interviews using two-page resumes.

However, if you’ve only been working for a few years, or you’ve recently graduated, we strongly recommend sticking to a single page.

3.2.1 Sections / categories

We recommend using the following section layout for a PM resume. The exact titles and order of the sections is open to debate, but we know that this approach works for companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, for both junior and experienced candidates.

  1. Personal information
  2. Work experience
  3. Education
  4. Extracurricular
  5. Skills & Interests

Whether or not you stick exactly to our suggested categories, we highly recommend keeping these general layout/design tips in mind:

DO

  • Choose a professional-looking font: Size 10-12, black and white. Arial and Calibri are fine
  • Save it as a PDF
  • Use bullet points
  • Make sure the formatting is 100% neat and consistent
  • Include enough white space that it doesn’t look overcrowded

DON’T

  • Include a “summary” or “objective” section at the top (unless you have an unusual profile which needs explaining). Your CV is already a summary, so this just wastes space
  • Include references
  • Pick an unusual font to try and stand out

In the remaining steps, we’ll help you craft each section. Let’s go!

3.3 Step 3: the Personal Information section

This section is not the place to try and impress. Just make sure you get your details across in as few words as possible and avoid mistakes.

section 1

Notice how the above example is extremely clean and easy to read. Follow these tips to achieve the same:

DO:

  • Use bigger font for your name than for the rest of the section to make it stand out
  • Include your name, email address, phone number, city/county you live in
  • Ideally include a link to your LinkedIn profile (or Github if you have an engineering background)

DON’T:

  • Title this section. It’s not necessary in this type of layout, so save the space
  • Include a street address, it’s unnecessary and unsafe
  • Include a photo, date of birth or gender, unless specifically requested to do so
  • Don’t label each piece of information e.g “email:”, “tel:”, etc. It’s obvious what they are, so save the space
  • Link to personal or portfolio websites here, you can do that lower down

3.4 Step 4: the Work Experience section

This is probably the most important part of your resume to get right, and the easiest to get wrong. Many candidates think that their work experience speaks for itself, and simply list their role and a few of their main responsibilities.

However, we recommend a much more powerful approach.

Instead of listing responsibilities, you need to talk about actions. This means starting each bullet point with an action verb. These verbs should relate to the eight skills from section 1 that companies look for in PM resumes (Strategy, Design, Coding, Digital marketing, Data analysis, Leadership, Communication, Organization). "Designed," "Analyzed," "Led," or "Built" are good examples of such verbs.

Choosing actions that are relevant to one of the eight product manager essential skills will also mean that your resume contains the keywords that recruiters (and sometimes Applicant Tracking Systems) will be looking for. We wrote an article about product manager keywords if you want to know more.

You should also focus on the results of what you did and quantify them as much as possible to highlight the tangible contributions you have made. After all, being a PM is about building things to reach a goal and then measuring the outcome. Ex-Google SVP Lazlo Bock talks about a common method for doing this that you might find helpful, called the “X, Y, Z” formula.

Finally, balance is also important. Because a product manager role is extremely multi-faceted, it’s important to demonstrate a range of skills in the work experience section. Take a look at the example below and notice that as well as examples of leadership, there are also demonstrations of coding and design experience, etc.

resume section 2

Notice how the candidate implements the things we’ve mentioned above; using action verbs to talk about their actions and achievements, quantifying them where possible, and covering a range of skills.

Ready to start writing this section? Use the tips below to keep you on the right track.

DO:

  • Use reverse chronological order, putting most recent employment at the top
  • Use present tense verbs (e.g "Lead, Develop, Execute") in your current position (except for completed achievements), and past tense verbs for past position (e.g "Led, Developed, Executed")
  • Describe your actions and what they achieved
  • Include metrics to quantify what your actions achieved where possible
  • Study the language of the job description and where appropriate, match it
  • Make sure you’ve naturally included several relevant keywords
  • Demonstrate a balance of skills

DON’T

  • Be shy and humble, now is not the time!
  • Just put your responsibilities
  • Be vague
  • Go so overboard with numbers that it looks like a math problem. It still needs to be easy to read
  • Include lots of buzzwords just for the sake of it

3.5 Step 5: the Education section

This section should be extremely concise and clear. Hopefully your educational achievements can do the talking for you, as all you can really do here is present the necessary information with the right level of detail.

Let’s take a look at what it should look like.

resume section 3

Note that if you have recently graduated and only have internship experiences, this section should follow the Personal Information section, and you may want to go into a bit more detail. Otherwise, you can include it after work experience.

Follow the tips below to make sure you get it just right.

DO:

  • If you have multiple degrees (e.g. a BA and an MBA), you should write a subsection like the one above for each degree, starting with your highest level of education first (e.g. your MBA)
  • For each degree, include the name of the degree, university and dates in the headline. If you’re a recent graduate you can also list any subjects you have taken that are relevant to product management (e.g. design, coding, entrepreneurship, data analysis, etc.)
  • List your grades (e.g. GPA) as well as results of other standardized tests you have taken (e.g. SAT, GMAT, etc.) that demonstrate your intellect
  • Detail any awards and scholarships you received at university level and most importantly how competitive they were (e.g. two awards for 1,000 students)
  • If you don’t have much tech work experience you might want to include tech bootcamps (e.g. General Assembly) and link to your projects, or online courses (e.g. Udacity)

DON’T:

  • Panic if you don't have a degree. You don’t have to have gone to college to get into a FAANG company. Instead put your high school grades and any relevant educational qualifications you gained after school.
  • Include high school experience if you've already graduated.
  • Include your thesis / dissertation unless you're a fairly recent graduate, in which case you should summarize the topic in a way that's VERY easy to understand

3.6 Step 6: the Extracurricular Activities section

PM roles require a very large breadth of skills, and it can be difficult to demonstrate all of them through your work experience. The extracurricular section is therefore a great opportunity to cover these such skills. It can be particularly useful in demonstrating leadership skills, especially if you haven’t yet had much opportunity to lead in a work situation.

Some candidates (like those in the examples above) ignore the extracurricular section, preferring to use that space to list more work achievements. That's your call, there's no right answer on that.

Note: If you’re applying to Google, you should consider calling this section “Leadership & Awards” to fit in with their recommended CV structure. Obviously you’ll need to make sure that the content demonstrates those two things.

Below is how this section looks on our example resume.

resume section 4

 

The extracurricular section is more important for recent graduates than experienced hires, but even for PMs with a lot of impressive work experience to fit in, leaving a bit of space to talk about your personal projects can add a whole new dimension to the “you” on your resume.

Stuck for ideas? Here are a few different types of activities you could write about (not exhaustive):

  • Side businesses: if you have set up a side business you should mention it along with the number of users and / or revenue you have achieved
  • Coding projects: if you're not a developer but have built simple web apps to teach yourself to code, this is the place to mention it
  • Writing / design: if you enjoy writing or design and have a blog where you show your work, share it in this section
  • Meetups / events: be sure to mention if you have organized meetups or events in the past, as this is a great way to highlight leadership skills
  • University clubs / sports teams: if you are a recent graduate and have held a position in a university club (e.g. Entrepreneur club) or were part of a sports team, then this is also a great thing to include

However, you simply might not have any recent and relevant extracurricular activities worth including. This is often the case for parents who have young children. If that’s the case, you can leave out this section and fill the space by adding more content to the work experience section. After all, if it’s not going to make you shine, there’s no point including it.

Ready to write the extracurricular section? Here are the remaining tips you need to know.

DO

  • Use this section to demonstrate relevant skills, such as leadership
  • As with work experience, try and include actions and achievements, and quantify them

DON’T

  • Put a hyphen in the title: "Extracurricular” is all one word
  • Capitalize “university” unless you’re using it as a proper noun (e.g “Oxford University”)
  • Give very outdated examples. If you graduated 7+ years ago, there shouldn’t really be university examples there

3.7 Step 7: the Additional Skills & Interests section

Product managers need to be adept at using a wide range of tools, methodologies and technologies and this section gives you the opportunity to list yours.

resume section 5

As you can see in the resume example above, you can also list any foreign languages you speak, as employers generally look favorably on them.

You should also list any programming languages (e.g. HTML, CSS, JS, Python, etc.), as well as relevant tools (e.g. Jira, Sketch, Tableau, etc.) and product management methodologies that you’re familiar with.

Under “Interests,” listing a few hobbies is an opportunity to show some more of your personality and to stand out from the crowd. It’s also probably the only place where you might be able to squeeze in a drop of humor (as in the example above) but we advise against doing that unless it comes easily.

However, if you feel you’ve already covered your personal interests in Extracurricular (or if you’ve been so career-focused that you simply don’t have any!) you can change this section to just “Additional skills”.

Additional tips:

DO

  • List things in sentences rather than lots of bullets which takes up too much vertical space

DON’T

  • Include generic, uninteresting things that everyone likes doing, like “watching Netflix” or “hanging out with friends,” as hobbies

3.8 Step 8: proofreading and feedback

Attention to detail is a core PM skill, so don’t skip this step! Use the grammar checking tool in Word or Google Docs, and proofread until it’s perfect. This is harder than it sounds because multiple reviews and tweaking after the initial proofread can easily create new hard-to-spot errors. The only solution is to proofread again.

We recommend saving as a pdf file unless the job description says otherwise, and checking it opens properly (with the correct formatting) on a Mac or PC.

Receiving feedback is also important. Share it with a friend or partner and they’ll be very likely to see mistakes that you haven’t noticed. Of course, if you can share it with an experienced product manager, that’s even better.

DO

  • Proofread from top to bottom and then read it in reverse to check spelling
  • If you’ve tweaked it, proofread again before sending
  • Check the file opens properly on Mac and PC
  • Get feedback on it before sending

DON’T

  • Send it with typos. Your resume is your product!

4. Your PM resume checklist

Almost ready to send your resume? Use this checklist to make sure you’re following the best practices we’ve recommended above.

You should be answering “Yes” to every question.

General

  • Have you worked out which of the 4 main types of PM the job description is looking for, and does your resume match it?

Layout

  • Is it just one page? If not, do you have the experience to merit 2 pages?
  • Is the formatting 100% consistent and neat?
  • Is there enough white space to breathe?

Personal Information

  • Have you checked your contact details are correct?

Work Experience

  • Have you talked about your actions rather than your responsibilities?
  • Have you quantified the impact of your actions?
  • Have you demonstrated the 8 PM skills? (strategy, UX design, coding, marketing, data analytics, leadership, communication, organization)
  • Have you got the tenses correct?

Extracurricular

  • If you graduated >5 years ago, are your examples post-university?

Skills & Interests

  • Have you listed all the programming languages and tools you’re familiar with?
  • Do your interests make you stand out from the crowd in some way?

Proofreading and feedback

  • Have you proofread since you last edited it?
  • Have you received any feedback on your resume and updated it?
  • Have you saved it as a PDF to make sure it displays correctly on all devices?

Did you say “Yes” to every question in the checklist? Well done! If you’ve used all the tips in this article, then your resume should be in good condition and will give you a fighting chance of getting that interview.

5. Is your resume truly outstanding?

If you're going for one of the top tech jobs, having a resume that's "fine" may not be enough. To get your product management resume from "fine" to "outstanding" usually requires feedback from someone who really knows their stuff - as in an ex-recruiter or manager at one of the top companies.

We know it's hard to get access to those type of people. That's why we've created a resume review service, that allows you to get immediate feedback on your resume with a top recruiter/coach of your choosing. Take a look!