Presentation for Product Women's Resume Writing for Product workshop event. Presented at Brainmates Product Women with Petra Gross, GM of Digital Product from WooliesX
2. Looks matter – visual design, layout, colours and
pictures
Origin stories – bios, intros and blurbs
To include, or not to include, that is the question
Put your best foot forwards – talking about key
achievements
Don’t forget the basics!
Cheat sheets for easy wins – things I’ve found
that put you ahead of the game
TALENT
MANAGEMENT
Where do we start?
3. Some product
trends from
2019 …
• Tribes and Chapters
• Blockchain for secure information
• IoT everywhere!
• Customer-led solutions
• DIY Design
• Make your own job title
• Education equals value
4. Looks Matter– visual design, layout, colours and pictures
1. Don’t put your photo on your
resume
2. Less is more. But also more is
more.
3. Don’t treat your resume like you’re
applying for a job through the visual
equivalent of interpretive dance.
6. Don’t include:
• Irrelevant roles
• Family members, next of kin,
emergency contacts
• Subpar skills
• Internal role titles
To include or not to include,
that is the question…
7. Do include:
• Visa/Sponsorship status
• If you’re seeking a part time role
• Your location preferences/home suburb and primary mode of transport
• Any gaps in your employment are covered
• Reporting lines
• Company details
8. • Don’t talk about yourself in 1st or 3rd person – no ‘I’
‘he’ or ‘she’
• Bio, education, skills etc come first
• Chronological order working backwards from your
most recent role to earliest relevant one
• Contact details in header or footer
• Remember the bit where you do Product?
• First list responsibilities, then key achievements
Don’t forget the basics!
Resume layout 101
9. Functional resume
example
• Good for entering Product from another
area to showcase relevant skills and
experience
• Or for senior roles where examples of
things such as strategy, innovation,
management, execution of vision, etc
are important skills for the role
• Focus on what you’ve actually done to
show you have the right skills for the
role. Be specific and measurable.
• Quantify or qualify all accomplishments
10. Put your best foot forwards -
talking about key achievements
•
•
•
•
11. Page
Cheat sheet for easy wins
– things I’ve found that put you ahead of the game
• Update your LinkedIn
• State your availability to talk
• Get involved
• Keep a list of what you’ve applied for
• Ask for referrals and recommendations
• Find a recruiter you trust
12. Why working with a specialist Product
recruiter can help you succeed
TALENT
MANAGEMENT
Looks matter – visual design, layout, colours and pictures
Rule number one: Don’t put your photo on your resume.
I have yet to find a reason to put a picture of yourself on a resume unless you’re applying for a modelling job.
No one should hire you on your appearance, and unconscious bias is sadly alive and well today and can affect your chances of success even if a hiring manager doesn’t realise it. Plus it’s corny. I ALWAYS want to meet a candidate if I’m impressed with their resume, you shouldn’t have to rely on your Sunday best photograph of you with a (debatably) virgin bloody mary and your best mate’s head cut out of the shot from the rooftop on Coogee Pav to get a foot in the door.
Rule number two: Less is more. But also more is more.
A lot of people look surprised when I tell them I don’t ever want a one page resume. But realistically if you’re looking to get into Product you should have an abundance of examples where you can apply your product knowledge, processes and frameworks, and talk about relevant experience. Jamming that onto a one page resume makes it look extremely cramped and will turn a hiring manager off bothering to read it because very few people have the patience to read a condensed single page of size 8 helvetica.
Far better to spread it across 3 pages; make it legible, lots of wide margins and white (or other pale coloured) space, clear distinctions between your roles and a clear career progression to the point you’re at now.
Rule number three: Don’t treat your resume like you’re applying for a job through the visual equivalent of interpretive dance.
(See what I did there?)
This means; no abstract graphs or pie charts depicting your technical or soft skills, no maze designs with a ‘follow the leader’ path from the bottom left corner in a spiral pattern to the middle, no anagrams, no acrostics, no alarmingly bright graphics that look like a children book.
You can definitely have personality, and in fact, complimentary use of colour and the occasional accent, icon or flourish is lovely, but don’t forget you’re applying for a product role, not a graphics, analytics or design role.
Origin stories – bios, intros and blurbs
This is it! The chance to wow a recruiter or hiring manager in a paragraph or less!
Who can tell me why these words are on the screen?
That’s right, you should NEVER use these in your introduction or resume bio (and even I’ve been guilty of some of them in my time):
Passionate
Excited
Motivated
Enthusiastic
Results-oriented
Ninja
Unicorn
Driven
Focused
Gun
Whizz
Hardworking
Ambitious
Unemployed
Rockstar/Superstar
Expert (unless you literally ARE a subject matter expert – then expect to be grilled about it)
Now that’s out of the way – how do you write a mind blowing self-promoting bio without sounding big headed? Easy. Use facts.
This is the Segway to your experience, so outline it effectively.
An experienced Business Analyst who has recently stepped into the Product Management world with a year’s experience as a Product Owner in an Enterprise Telco business.
Proven experience in developing product roadmaps that align with business goals (you can prove this later in your key achievements when you talk about how the product you developed helped grow the business’s customer conversion by 2000% or turned a $1.2mil profit or was a 147% ROI etc etc)
A Product Manager with 7 years experience across Digital Agencies, Media and Property, ready to take the step into a new industry.
A supportive team leader with experience upskilling and mentoring a developing team from scratch.
A Product Owner and Subject Matter Expert that had total ownership over a new product line that has currently outperformed, delivering 104% ROI and ready to launch 2 weeks ahead of delivery date.
You get the idea. Generally a bio should be about four or five sentences that outline the highlights of your career to date and what a great person you are for the job. Not just what a great person you are.
To include, or not to include, that is the question
It’s tough to know when enough it enough, and a lot of people don’t often know what is or isn’t valuable to a recruiter or hiring manager.
Don’t include the following:
Irrelevant roles – if you started out in Maccas serving drive thru before you got your first UX job, we don’t care
Family members, next of kin, emergency contacts – people still state if they’re married or have children, this can again cause unconscious bias and takes up unnecessary space – we’ll find out about that when we talk to you
Any technology or skill you’re not confident enough to use/perform unsupervised – if you’ve dabbled in Javascript but can’t actually code a website, don’t include it, it’s misleading. You can always learn later.
Role titles that mean nothing to the outside world – if your job title was “Dynamic Enterprise Conversion Unicorn” but realistically you were a Product Marketing Manager – change it up. No one understands what an internal title like that means, so make it easier on the person trying to find a Product Manager by stating you were, in fact, one of those.
Do make sure to include:
Visa or sponsorship status – occasionally when recruiting we work for businesses who can only exclusively hire Australian citizens due to federal law – it’s saving your time and the hiring manager’s if you specify a need for visa support or are in a situation that requires consideration for work rights.
If you’re seeking a part time role – part time roles are not very common in the Product space, so specify if that’s your preference. When we do work part time roles, those candidates become totally invaluable, but when you’re not and you think you’ve found the perfect person for a 40 hour a week role, and they only want to work every second Tuesday and one Friday a month, it’s heartbreaking.
Your location preferences or home suburb, and if you have a car – again for the sake of not wasting people’s time – you may not be aware of where the offices are located, but we do – and we’re not going to call you about a role in the Shire if you live in French’s Forest and have to rely on public transport.
Any gaps in your employments are covered – did you holiday and build houses in a village in Africa for a year? Mention it so we don’t think you just couldn’t get a job for 14 months or disappeared to Narnia.
Company details – you might have worked for the business for five years but there’s a chance that the hiring manager hasn’t heard of them before – include a sentence of two about what the business does, the product, the industry etc.
Reporting lines – it’s great to understand a bit about the structure of the business, with product being a fairly new role title – did you report into the Founder of a startup? Or a Head of Product? And did you have any direct reports in the role? A cross-function SCRUM team? Build up a little picture of the product team to allow us to understand your role and it’s impact a bit better.
Don’t forget the basics! Resume layout 101
Don’t talk about yourself in 1st or 3rd person – no ‘I’ ‘he’ or ‘she’
Bio, education, skills etc come first
Chronological order working backwards from your most recent role to earliest relevant one
Contact details in header or footer
Remember the bit where you do Product?
First list responsibilities, then key achievements
SEE RESUME EXAMPLE
Chronological versus functional layouts depending on experience.
Good for entering Product from another area to showcase relevant skills and experience
Or for senior roles where examples of things such as strategy, innovation, management, execution of vision, etc are important skills for the role
Focus on what you’ve actually done to show you have the right skills for the role. Be specific and measurable.
Quantify or qualify all accomplishments
Put your best foot forwards – talking about key achievements
I’m a massive fan of using the classic STAR or CAR technique to outline key achievements, especially in Product when context of customer problems and business drivers are key to explaining the effectiveness of your solutions.
Situation – I’ve adapted this for Product to mean the customer problem identified or the context around the initiative or product you’ve been given
Task – What product did you work on? What was your role in it? Did you have to release an MVP mobile app? Or focus on a single initiative for the company’s flagship product?
Actions – What was your process, what did you do to get to where you needed to go? Who did you work with and what methods did you use?
Result – Was it a success? Was it a failure? Was it a failure you learned from? What were your success metrics and how did you perform against them? If your KPI was to increase retention by 10% and you increased it by 13% - make sure to state you over-exceeded.
Cheat sheets for easy wins – things I’ve found that put you ahead of the game
Update your LinkedIn. Don’t have a LinkedIn? MAKE ONE – we ALL check against your LinkedIn and look at your general activity, involvement etc. Get posting, get involved.
Put the times you’re generally available on your resume so recruiters know when to call – this helps you avoid that awkward ‘excuse me whilst I just find a room or stand in a stair well really obviously taking a conversation I shouldn’t be having at work’
Get involved – attending community events, doing GA or Academyxi or Udemy courses show your passion and commitment
Keep a list of all the roles you’ve applied for on your phone or in a draft email – there’s nothing more irritating than feeling like a candidate has gone on a mass ‘click apply’ spree of Seek when they ask ‘what role was this I applied for again?’ and it doesn’t make you look very good.
Get referrals or recommendations from managers or colleagues – yes you’ll still need references come the pointy end of a job process, but having recommendations about how awesome you are on your LinkedIn profile or a snapshot from your last CPO about how the team couldn’t have run without you at the bottom of your resume, will help big you up without sounding arrogant.
Find a couple of recruiters that you actually trust and work with them – I can’t emphasise the importance of loyalty enough. I have clients who have become my candidates and vice versa and the relationships have lasted over the years and multiple hires or career moves. When someone who has a birds eye view over the market invests in you, it becomes a really valuable relationship that can benefit both sides.
