Project Manager (PM) Resume: Examples, Format, Insider Tips

Not sure how to revamp your old project manager resume or create a new one? You’re in the right place to learn just that.

The most important thing to get right? Show hiring managers how your PM experience translates into effective project delivery.

The global pool of project management candidates has been steadily growing. PMI estimates there are 16.5 million project managers in the world. Pretty crowded, huh?

According to their resumes, they all know Scrum and Kanban. They all claim to be agile and lean. So what’s your edge going to be?

You’ll write a project manager resume that proves you’ll save your prospective employer’s time and money.

This guide will teach you how to build a stellar project manager resume, regardless of your work experience, industry, or skill level.

First, see some PM resume samples you can use as reference points.

Sample Project Manager Resume for an Experienced Candidate (5+ Years in the Field)

Sample Project Manager Resume for a Recent Grad (Limited Work Experience)

Now let’s break down a step-by-step formula for a project manager resume that gets things done.

How to Format and Structure a Project Manager Resume

It’s hard to make a great first impression if you submit a sloppy, typo-riddled resume that’s hard to scan. And scanning is exactly what hiring managers and applicant tracking systems (ATSs) alike do when shortlisting candidates.

Here are some tips to help you build a scannable PM resume that will highlight your critical skills and accomplishments.

Give it a professional look 

A visually-appealing, professional-looking resume will stand out from the pile and contribute to your overall presentation. 

1. Pick the right font  

You won’t go wrong if you opt for one of the classic fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, Roboto, Calibri, Verdana, Georgia, or Tahoma. 

You want a clean, evenly-distributed font that’s easy on the eyes and flows effortlessly thanks to its balanced spacing. 

As for the size, stick to 11–12pt for better readability. However, if it’s just about these few lines of text spilling over to the second page of a resume, you can use a 10pt Sans Serif font to keep your resume one-page. 

2. Adjust line spacing 

White space is your friend, especially in terms of line spacing. It gives recruiters some breathing room while guiding their eyes to where you want them to go. Tight line spacing will make recruiters squint while reading your resume. If, in turn, it’s too loose, it will disrupt the flow of text.  

To hit the sweet spot, keep it between 1.15 and 1.5. 

3. Set margins for one inch 

Tap into the power of white space again, and use a one-inch margin on each side. 

This way, you’ll declutter your resume, make it aesthetically pleasing, and improve its readability. 

4. Use legible, large headings above each section 

Organize your resume into sections covering your contact information, professional summary, work experience, education, and skills. 

Large headings above these sections will indicate what each one is about and smoothly guide recruiters through your resume. When it comes to the font size, use 14–16pt to make your headings conspicuous.

Give your project management experience a logical structure 

Use the reverse chronological format. This commonly used format allows you to throw a spotlight on your most recent accomplishments — and these are what matters the most to hiring decision-makers.

Listing your latest and most relevant job first will make it more noticeable to recruiters.

Project Manager Resume Example: Work Experience

A typical reverse chronological resume for project management jobs consists of the following sections, sorted in this order: 

1. Header with contact info
2. Resume summary or objective
3. Work experience
4. Education 
5. Skills
6. Additional sections

Check out our dedicated guide on different types of resume formats to find the one that best fits your job requirements.  

Now that we’ve outlined a step-by-step process for building your new project manager resume let’s go into specifics and analyze each section in more detail. 

Create a Header with Contact Information

Include:

• Your first and last name 
• Job title 
• Phone number 
• Email address 
• Location
• Linkedin URL 
• Links to all relevant platforms or websites with examples of your work. 

While all this might seem pretty straightforward, be careful about the following:

• An unprofessional email address can be a major opportunity killer. Email addresses containing nicknames, pet names, local sports club references, or personal interests don’t belong in the business world. So, [email protected] simply won’t cut it. Similarly, outdated domains like AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail will look like a blast from the past on your resume.
• Typos in this section won’t just make you look like someone who’s not exactly detail-oriented and thorough. A single wrong letter or number in the email address/phone number can render you unreachable. Double-check all details and enlist another pair of eyes to proofread everything.

Write a Project Manager Resume Summary or a Resume Objective Statement

In this section, you want to quickly recap why the recruiter should go on reading your resume and how they would benefit from having you on the team.

Depending on your previous experience, you can achieve this either by including a resume summary or a summary objective statement.

What is a resume objective statement? 

If you are an entry-level candidate, a resume objective will work best for your relatively modest experience in the field. 

This brief intro, also called a career objective, consisting of two to three sentences tops, should focus on your goals and expectations from the role of a project manager. Since recent grads and career-switchers don’t have too many relevant professional accomplishments to showcase, drawing the recruiter’s attention to your skills and potential is the way to go.  

How to compose a project manager resume objective? 

Here’s a simple formula to help you: 

Your dominant soft skills + current status and background + top tech skills and certifications relevant for the project manager role + how you can contribute to the company. 

DOs of an effective, attention-grabbing resume objective ✅

• Keep it short and sweet 
• Be specific 
• Tailor it to the company you’re applying for
• Tell what value you can bring to the company.  

  Here’s an example of a professional project management resume objective: 

This objective clearly states the candidate’s soft and tech skills, their current status, and how the company can benefit from hiring them. 

DON’Ts of an effective, attention-grabbing resume objective ❌

• Vague phrasing
• Repetitiveness
• Verbosity

By not following the simple resume objective blueprint we discussed in the section above, you can easily end up with a hot mess like this: 

While this candidate might be an excellent choice for the job, the recruiter won’t even pay attention to the rest of their resume. 

This PM resume objective is too long, all over the place (although the candidate boasts about being well-organized), and lacks specifics about what their proven record is all about. 

Not to mention…we have no clue why the candidate is so convinced they’ll contribute to the company. 

To be sure you nail your objective statement for a project manager resume, read our article 60+ Resume Objective Examples [+How-to Guide]. 

What is a resume summary?

If you already have some experience in project management, then a resume summary is your head-turner to go for.

These 3–5 sentences placed at the top of your resume should revolve around your past achievements, top skills, and the potential to translate your work experience into a demonstrable benefit for your employer. 

Is there a clear-cut resume summary formula? 

Glad you asked! Check it out:

Your position + years of experience + industry. General experience + key skills. Your biggest achievement (quantitative or qualitative). How you can contribute to the company you applied to. 

For more tips and examples, read our article that delves into the anatomy of a perfect resume summary.  

Here’s that formula put into practice in a project management resume summary:

Senior project manager with 8+ years of experience in the construction industry. CCM and PMP certifications. Strong communication and leadership skills, and a proven record of coordinating large-scale projects (1,500 people.) Improved team performance by 25% and reduced equipment malfunctions by 10% by updating the operational policy. Ready to manage TopSkyline’s multiple projects ahead of deadlines, cut costs, and exceed quality expectations.

This one will leave the hiring manager dying to read the rest of your resume.

On the other hand, we strongly advise against a project manager resume summary that goes along the lines of:

A seasoned project manager, worked on numerous projects across different industries,  qualified in Agile. Hard-working and willing to grow professionally and expand my skill set by joining TopSkyline’s team.

Wow, wrong on so many levels. 

What’s a “seasoned project manager”? How many years of experience are we talking about? “Numerous projects” can mean anything and so can “different industries.” 

Not to mention they talk about what they expect without telling the recruiter what’s in it for them. 

Whether you pick a resume summary or summary objective, focus on what you can bring to the table rather than what you want. Everybody knows what you want. A project management job!

Bonus tip: This section goes at the top of your resume, but it’s best to craft it after you’ve created the rest of your resume. Then it will be easier to condense all the other sections into a few powerful, value-packed sentences reflecting your top strengths, skills, and achievements.

Highlight Your Project Management Experience in the Work History Section 

Here it is. The resume section that will take your PM job search from Selected for Development to Done. 

The work experience.

Luckily, we’ve got a quick and dirty recipe you can use as a reference. 

• Use reverse chronological order and list your most recent jobs first.
• The more recent the job, the more details you should include.
• When describing your job responsibilities, use 3–5 bullet points and start each with an action verb, i.e., launched, helmed, coordinated, executed, or implemented.
• Rather than listing your day-to-day duties, focus on your achievements and accomplishments. Whenever possible, quantify them using numerical values such as % or $.
• Unless you’re a newbie to the industry, list only the experience relevant to the project manager role. So, your stint as a tech writer for a website won’t impress the recruiter.  

Take a cue from the following project manager work history section sample:

IT Project Manager
SkyNet
04/2015 – 11/2022

• Led the development of SkyNet’s AI-powered search engine, which helped the company raise $5 million in funding,  through all stages.
• Oversaw a team of 5 developers and 8 contractors
• Managed the project deliverables within the predefined timeline and budget 
• Collaborated with the product management team to scope and validate customer feature request and identify the ones that will bring the highest ROI 
• Developed the procedures that resulted in cutting development costs by 15% 
• Proactively determined potential bottlenecks, thus ensuring 100% on-time delivery

The candidate used numbers to illustrate their achievements and precisely said what they did right to make good things happen. 

Now, let’s analyze a bad example and see what your PM work history section should NOT look like: 

Healthcare Project Manager
Modern BioSys
09/2019 – present

• Responsible for goal setting, team productivity, and managing several projects
• Creating different status reports 
• Working closely with other departments to meet deadlines and troubleshoot roadblocks 
• Creating product specifications and implementing product management requirements

Those are duties every PM performs. This candidate could have just as well said “I’m a project manager.” 

Yeah, so are 300+ other candidates in this pipeline.

Want to dig deeper? Our blog post Work Experience on a Resume: 20+ Examples on How to List It will provide some inspiration for nailing your work history section. 

List Your Education and Certifications on a PM Resume

The same reverse chronological order applies to structuring your education section. 

Although it traditionally goes below the work history section, if your experience is still nothing to write home about, it’s OK for these two sections to swap places. 

Here’s how to list your education on a project management resume and make your hard-earned degrees count. 

Include the following: 

Your degree, field of study, major, school name, and graduation date. 

Check the example below: 

Bachelor of Computer Science
University of Washington
Graduated in 2011 

If you hold a BA or a higher degree and have relevant experience, there’s no need to mention your high school — just your BA and all degrees above it. 

Only if you’re a recent grad or have no experience in project management, then you can go into detail about your education and try to capitalize on it. In that case, list all your academic accomplishments, GPA (only if it’s higher than 3.5), awards, internships, and relevant coursework. 

Here’s a sample of the education section relevant to an IT project manager with no experience:

Master of Data Science; Minor in Mathematics
California Institute of Technology
Graduated in 2018
4.0 GPA
Dean’s List 2014-2015
Relevant courses: Artificial intelligence; Algorithms; Neural Networks; Natural Language Processing

Showcase Your Project Management Skills 

We’ve already mentioned skills when discussing the resume summary and objective. However, they play such a critical role in determining whether a candidate is a good fit for the job and company that they require a separate section. 

The key thing to keep in mind? Highlight the skills that match this particular project manager job ad. 

And these skills will vary depending on the industry. 

So, before you whip up this list, start carefully compiling this list, check the job listing and see what the employer expects. 

Come up with a mix of hard (tech) and soft (interpersonal) skills, but make sure you’re not exaggerating or embellishing things. 

Here are some skills that would look good on a project manager resume. 

• Critical thinking 
• Problem solving 
• Time management 
• Financial planning 
• Communication 
• Leadership 
• Organization 
• Team management 
• Delegation 
• Detail oriented 
• Budget management 
• Scheduling 
• Conflict resolution 
• Project scoping 
• Scrum 
• Agile 
• PMP
• Jira 
• Technical writing 
• Project roadmapping
• Risk management 
• Prioritization 
• Adaptability 
• Active listening 
• Waterfall 
• PSA tools 
• Kanban boards 
• Reporting 
• Performance tracking 
• Asana

Yes, we also have a detailed article on Skills to Put on a Resume, so we’ve got you covered from A to Z.  

Add the Not-so-Optional Extra Sections to your Project Manager Resume

So far, you have managed to distinguish yourself as a potential hire. These extra sections will jazz up your resume and give you a competitive edge. 

There are several additional categories you can include, and some of the most typical are: 

Certifications 

Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Agile Project Manager (IAPM), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), CompTIA Project+, PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), Six Sigma certifications, Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM).   

Awards 

Mention only the awards relevant to the project manager role you’re applying for. For example, IPMA’s Young Project Manager of the Year or Agile Leader of the Year, would make sense to include. 

Volunteer experience 

This nice-to-have section will demonstrate your values and commitment to a greater cause. However, since there’s not much room to squeeze everything you would like on a resume, the volunteer experience section is mainly suitable for entry-level candidates whose work history won’t take up too much space. 

Conferences 

Listing relevant conferences shows your determination to stay up to date with the latest industry trends. It’s even better if you’re among lecturers or keynote speakers, so make sure to include all this. 

Languages 

Project managers usually work with diverse teams from different parts of the world, so being fluent in more than one language can score you additional brownie points. Don’t forget to mention the proficiency level for each language you add. 

Customize Your PM Resume to Match the Job Description 

By following our guide, you can build a resume that will get you on a candidate shortlist, but it’s not a good idea to send the same version of your resume to every job you’re applying for. This way, you’re only doing yourself a disservice.

To avoid coming across as generic and spammy, tailor your resume to match every individual job description. 

First of all, check the skill-related words in the job description — these are the keywords you should include on your resume to make it ATS-friendly. 

Most companies use these bots for qualifying applicants, so your application will reach the human recruiter only if it’s properly optimized. 

Analyze job responsibilities and expectations and customize your work experience section accordingly. This little trick will allow you to convince the recruiter you’re not just another candidate but the perfect person for the job. 

Summary

Here’s a TL;DR of our project manager resume guide:

• Structure your resume properly and remember that the devil is in the details, so pay attention to fonts, line spacing, margins, and headings 
• Use reverse chronological order to highlight your most recent work accomplishments 
• If your work experience is limited, start your resume with a career objective and place the education section right below it; if you have lots to brag about professionally, open strong with a resume summary followed by the work experience section
• Sprinkle your resume with relevant keywords based on your skills to make sure you’ll pass the ATS scan 
• Include your certifications, coursework, awards, and anything else relevant for the role you’re applying for 
• Check each job posting and use requirements and expectations to customize your experience and skills sections accordingly