Stand out in growth/product with your CV
Stand out in growth/product with your CV
Stop describing your role. I know what a PM does.
Stop describing your role in your CV in product/growth. I expect you to know how to manage a backlog. I expect you to know how to do research.
This is what I look for when looking at CVs from product/design/growth roles:
What you should tell me is in ascending order of preference:
Distribution
How many people did I affect with my work?
This tells me whether someone else gave you already the trust for a sizeable responsibility. Even just mentioning how many interviews you did is better than saying "I did user interviews."
Quantify your experience.
Can be internal or external.
Impact on Distribution:
What was the impact on the people I affected with my work?
This is not always possible and you should be careful to not disclose confidential numbers. (When in doubt ask)
But your work always had a specific impact which lets me infer whether you know about a specific topic. For instance, just mentioning that you "helped 3 sales teams with their leads by surfacing data" lets me infer a ton of things:
She knows how to handle quantitative data
She worked with salespeople, knowing what they want/need
She worked with multiple salespeople, probably good with multi-team stakeholder management
The product she worked on must have been in B2B (due to sales present)
In general, cut the fluff, focus on your impact and be honest. Describe what a PM does that goes beyond their basics.
I appreciate an honest assessment any day over a generic description of what a product manager does. I know what they do. What I wonder is whether you are a good fit for MY role.
(Senior) leadership roles
Applies also to leadership positions. I might hire you as an associate if you can't do this and get lucky but as a senior leader, you have no business even applying like that.
If I’m hiring for a head of growth and you tell me only that you “lead growth teams” I will definitely not get back to you. How many? What was the scale of your operation? Were you successful? Don’t make me do research on this company if you could just write it out yourself.
Especially if we have numerous applications why should I waste time in prospecting and asking for more specific details if other candidates give it to me already?
Summary
1. Cut the fluff
2. Distribution & Responsibility
3. Impact wherever possible
You want to be hired for your strengths, not your generic role traits.
Help me find you in the noise.
Nice article, I agree with everything here in concept, but, a few essential comments:
1) The examples are all missing a description of the product and it’s PMF. I’d write them in ascending order to SHOW you understand PMF. For example, level one could be “my product is called X,” level two is “my product X makes task Y faster” and level three is “my product X solves unique customer pain Z and makes tasks Y faster.” Something like that.
2) You’re missing key numbers. Lead gen growth is ok, maybe level one. Sales growth is even better, maybe level two (e.g., 74% CAGR over three years). And profitability could be level 3.
And by the way, add actual numbers. That gives me a sense of scale, which is critical. That is, 1000% growth could be amazing, but it that was 10 to 1,000 leads a year, not so much. 10,000 to 100,000 -- that’s better.
3) You helped 3 sales people? That’s odd. Over three years you should have helped 300. Or all of them. Why so few?? Did you only have 3?
Again, the thought here is spot on! But those are important adds.
And one more point: great, concise writing is essential, but if you’re going to advocate this, you better fix your own spelling mistakes (e.g., Sales is not capitalized and I think I saw 3 or so).
But generally, great thought and nice graphic.