How to Reverse Engineer the Perfect Product Resume
As an aspiring product manager, I want to get recruiters to call me back, and eagerly schedule me time with the hiring manager.
Epic: Landing a product job
Hello Product Folk,
When trying to land any job, the first and most critical filter to pass is the resume review. How do I define “Pass”? It’s a recruiter reading your resume with regards to a product job, and setting up a call with you to further discuss the position.
This is a 0 to 1 event - if no recruiter ever wants to speak with you about the job, you’ll never land the position thus “0”. When reviewing resumes, they will only schedule a call if they believe you could ultimately fill the role - meaning - you’re in the game! The first call is the first step of the latter of ultimately landing a product manager role.
Thus “1”.
To tilt the odds in your favor, you have to identify the exact consumers of your resume, then tweak it so that you match the language the gatekeepers look for. (See my article on Jargon for why language matters)
Step 1 - Identify what level of Product job you're targeting.
A quick primer on entry level Product jobs:
Associate Product Manager - for those who have some elements of product work they’ve done at their company, but no formal experience.
Product Manager - For those who have the duties of product manager, but not in a software org or not in title.
Product Analyst - Alternative to Associate Product Manager as they also promote up to PM. This is more technical focused than Associate Product Manager, which is more business oriented in the job day-to-day
Step 2 - Identify the subset of tech you should target.
To land a product job (without CS background) its key to understand which industries you can claim to be a Subject Matter Expert. With technology eating the world, tech actually gets subdivided into specific industries each with their own culture and nuance. (Think Ad-tech, Mar-tech, Fin-Tech, etc, etc).
Let’s assume I’m an aspiring product manager who works at a Cable TV Station. The question I must ask is “What tech companies support the TV ecosystem?”
To keep it simple, I at the time of writing this article googled “TV Product Manager” and these are the first 5 companies to appear.
Spectrum - cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the company.
Experian - credit reporting company.
Peacock - over-the-top video streaming service
Amoebee - Advertising Platform
Apple - Big tech (So - basically everything. Consumer Electronic / wearables / TV / Finance / Music / etc etc)
The goal here is to get a general idea of what type of companies might want someone with my particular background. With this new data, I can begin a refined search focused on employers that would want someone of my particular background in Cable TV. Let’s get more specific.
Step 3 - Optimize your google search and alerts.
I observe in each of the JD, I regularly see “Ad-tech experience”. I have a a tech industry subset in which to narrow down my search. Time to get tactile.
I google search “Ad-tech Associate Product Manager , TV”
Programming Break:
Got a product resume you need to up-level? I’ll review your resume, then talk tactics on a call.
Are you struggling with a product problem today? I’ll hop on a call and help you put forth the game plan to solve your issues.
Are you a free subscriber? Join the ranks of the paid Pivot to Product elite, and you’ll gain access to the rest of this article where I walk through, point by point, how to translate a job listing into specific resume bullet points.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Pivot 2 Product to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.