If you’re looking for a job in product management, one thing is for certain—without strong product manager skills, you won’t be able to land one, let alone handle the responsibilities that come with this role.
After all, to be a successful product manager, you pretty much have to be a jack of all trades. Idea generation, market research, strategy development, and product testing are just a few steps of the product management process you’ll be responsible for. And needless to say, each of these steps requires certain skills and abilities.
Well, whether you’re wondering which product manager skills you should focus on developing or how to emphasize them on your resume, look no further!
In this article, we’ll look into the 11 best product manager skills to put on a resume, share tips on how to list them to impress the hiring manager, and more!
Key Takeaways
Product manager skills encompass the soft and hard skills required to effectively oversee and manage all processes related to specific products.
To ensure that your resume stands out from others, tailor your product manager skills to the job listing and mention them throughout your resume.
Some of the most in-demand product manager skills include UX proficiency, business knowledge, strategic thinking, and communication skills.
You can improve your product manager skills by working with a mentor and developing a strong product sense.
What Are Product Manager Skills?
Product manager skills are a combination of abilities that enable you to successfully manage the entire product life cycle. This includes overseeing the processes of conceptualizing, designing, developing, launching, and continuously improving products.
In other words, product manager skills and competencies help these professionals fulfill their responsibilities, such as:
Analyzing, identifying, and representing customer needs and requirements
Developing the product vision and strategy
Leading cross-functional teams throughout the product development process
To land a product manager job, you need a well-crafted resume that demonstrates that you can effectively handle the technical and interpersonal aspects of your job.
For this reason, you should always include both hard and soft skills on your resume—as long as they are relevant to the position.
How to Add Product Manager Skills to Your Resume
Properly adding product manager skills to your resume is crucial to grabbing the recruiter’s attention and showing them that you have what it takes to succeed in this role.
So, the last thing you want to do is list your product manager skills in the skills section of your resume and call it a day. This is a surefire way to end up with a generic resume that doesn’t make you stand out as a candidate.
Instead, tailor your resume and skills to the position by analyzing the job listing and identifying which skills the employer expects you to have. Make a list of these skills and note which of them you possess.
Once you know what the company is looking for, make sure to demonstrate your skills throughout your entire resume—not only in the skills section. You can do this by adding them to your resume summary or resume objective, as well as by mentioning them in relation to your accomplishments under the work experience section.
By backing your skills up with quantifiable achievements (e.g., “Analyzed product usage metrics to identify improvement opportunities, which helped increase user engagement by 15%”), you can effectively show the value you can bring to the company. This alone can make you stand out from your competition and increase your chances of landing the job!
11 Product Manager Skills To Include in Your Resume
Now, let’s check out which product manager skills you should put on your resume to grab the recruiter’s attention:
#1. Analysis and Research
Research and analysis skills enable product managers to find, interpret, and gain valuable insights from data to develop and improve their products. It’s safe to say that these are some of the most important product manager skills, as you’ll likely use them throughout the entire product life cycle.
For instance, you might research emerging market trends to brainstorm product ideas or analyze your competitor pricing models to effectively price your product. You might also have to look into customer feedback to see how you could improve your product and generate more sales.
In other words, these skills play a crucial part in your decision-making process as a product manager.
So, here’s an example of how you can showcase them on your resume:
Good Example
Conducted market research and analyzed user feedback to optimize the product’s pricing strategy, which increased customer retention by 38%.
#2. Technical Skills
Technical skills encompass a wide variety of technical abilities product managers should ideally possess, such as:
Coding
Prototyping
Agile methodology
Product roadmap development
A/B testing
As a product manager, you may not need extensive technical expertise, but having basic technical skills relevant to your product can be very beneficial. At the end of the day, you’ll be overseeing the entire process of product development, so technical skills can help you better collaborate with engineers, product designers, and other technical teams.
Needless to say, these skills are especially important if you’re working on SaaS or other digital products.
Let’s see how you can highlight technical product manager skills on your resume:
Good Example
Worked closely with software engineering teams to add two new features to the product using Python and C++, which increased customer satisfaction by 27%.
#3. Business Knowledge
Product management and business knowledge usually go hand in hand—after all, product managers help develop products that not only satisfy customers’ needs but also support broader business goals and promote its growth.
Because of this, you should have a good grasp of different business areas (e.g., budgeting, key performance indicators (KPIs), etc.) to successfully fulfill your responsibilities. You might also need to use certain business analyst skills, such as negotiation, when communicating with your team, stakeholders, and third parties, such as vendors.
Here’s how to emphasize business acumen on a product manager resume:
Good Example
Developed product roadmaps, ensuring they aligned with the company’s business strategy, model, and goals.
#4. UX Proficiency
Simply put, user experience (UX) design is the process of optimizing products to maximize their usability. UX designers and product managers alike aim to bring the best experience to the end user, so these professionals often work together to achieve this goal.
That said, as a product manager, you aren’t expected to know all the ins and outs of UX design. It’s enough to be familiar with the best practices and main principles of UX design, as this alone can help you effectively collaborate with UX design teams.
Here’s an example of how you can showcase this product manager skill on your resume:
Good Example
Collaborated with the UX design team to improve customer onboarding based on customer feedback, leading to an 18% decrease in customer churn.
#5. Prioritization
As a product manager, you’ll likely be juggling many responsibilities at once—analyzing customer needs, communicating them to other teams, generating ideas to improve customer experience and satisfaction, and so on.
Knowing this, it shouldn’t be surprising that prioritization is a must-have product manager skill. After all, it enables you to effectively organize your tasks according to their importance to make the best use of your time and meet deadlines.
So, here’s how to demonstrate your prioritization skill on a resume:
Good Example
Initiated the adoption of Asana to track project progress and prioritize tasks, which increased the team’s efficiency by 24% and ensured timely project delivery.
#6. Delegation
Delegation is a skill that helps you effectively assign tasks and responsibilities to your team members. Since product managers lead cross-functional teams, this skill is key to smoothly achieving common goals.
As a rule of thumb, a good product manager will evaluate each team member’s strengths and weaknesses before delegating responsibilities, set clear expectations and requirements, and regularly check in on the task progress.
Here’s an example of how to stress delegation skills on your product manager resume:
Good Example
Assigned weekly tasks to 7 product development team members based on their expertise, ensuring equal workload distribution.
#7. Communication
When it comes to soft skills, communication is undoubtedly the most valuable product manager skill. These professionals need to clearly communicate not only with their teams but also with customers, investors, and other parties.
If you’re looking to improve your written and verbal communication skills as a product manager, focus on these areas:
Public speaking
Active listening
Negotiation
Also, you might want to brush up on your writing skills, as you’ll likely have to write reports, technical product specifications, and the like.
Here’s how you can showcase your communication skills:
Good Example
Sent personalized emails to churned customers and utilized their feedback to assist the marketing team in developing a win-back strategy, which increased customer retention by 46%.
#8. Strategic Thinking
From defining the product vision to planning the product launch, product managers continuously employ their strategic thinking skills throughout the product life cycle.
Essentially, these skills enable product managers to see the big picture and make better decisions. Moreover, they help them understand how certain choices or changes might affect the product, customers, and the company at large.
So, here’s how you can show the hiring manager that you’re a strategic thinker:
Good Example
Redefined the product strategy based on customer insights, the latest market trends, and business goals, resulting in a 22% increase in annual revenue.
#9. Leadership
Since product manager is a managerial role, it’s only natural that these professionals should have great management skills.
Product managers lead teams consisting of members from different industries and departments, including sales, engineering, and marketing, among others. As such, strong leadership skills can help them:
Build a positive work environment
Ensure that everyone’s on the same page
Inspire their team to work together toward successfully delivering the end product within set deadlines
Now, let’s see how you can make your leadership skills shine on your resume:
Good Example
Led a cross-functional team of 12 from idea generation to product launch, successfully releasing 3 products within a year.
#10. Problem-Solving
In a sense, problem-solving is a product manager skill and responsibility—these professionals are in charge of coming up with products that will solve customers’ problems.
Besides that, product managers also use problem-solving skills to overcome any challenges that arise throughout the product management life cycle, whether it’s insufficient resources or unsatisfied customers.
For these reasons, effective problem-solving is an inseparable part of being an effective product manager, and it’s certainly a skill you want to show off on your resume. Here’s how you can do it:
Good Example
Identified a critical product gap and initiated the implementation of a new feature, achieving a 15% decrease in customer churn within the first month following its launch.
#11. Storytelling
Storytelling is an invaluable skill that can help you get your team, investors, customers, and other internal and external parties on board with your vision and generate interest in your product.
Ideally, you should tailor your product’s story to the audience. For example, if your goal is to get more customers to buy the product, you should focus most on how your product will solve their issues and leave out unnecessary technical details.
Here’s a good example of how you can showcase your storytelling skills:
Good Example
Presented an engaging product pitch to investors, which helped secure $1 million in funding for product development.
How to Improve Your Product Manager Skills
As with any other profession, you should strive to continuously improve your product manager skills and competencies. Here’s how to do that:
Find a mentor. To enhance your business knowledge, expand your professional network, and develop your skill set, seek out a mentor who has built successful products. This could be a senior product manager, CEO, a startup founder, or another experienced professional.
Focus on your communication skills. For a product manager, nothing is nearly as important as the ability to understand others and clearly convey ideas. So, practice active listening, pay close attention to your body language, and work on perfecting your public speaking skills.
Develop a strong product sense. To enhance your product sense, take the time to research different products relevant to your niche. Analyze their features, focusing on what makes these products stand out, what value they bring to the customer, and, most importantly, how they could be improved.
Closing Thoughts
That was quite a lot to take in, but we hope that this article helped you better understand which product manager skills are key to your career success.
As a rule of thumb, you should acquire and develop both soft and hard product manager skills, as they are equally important to this role.
Chances are, the industry you work or aspire to work in will dictate the specific skills you need to possess. That said, the product manager skills we covered today are universal and relevant to all industries, from tech to healthcare.
And one last thing—once you perfect your resume, don’t forget to add your product manager skills to your LinkedIn profile to optimize it and speed up your job hunt. Good luck!
