One of the many good things about being a project manager is that you never have to worry that your job will become obsolete. Even when the job market as a whole is challenging, employers are always looking for people with solid project management skills. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy to land a new job, however—with so much demand for project managers, more and more professionals from other fields are making career changes and joining in the competition.
If you’re updating your resume in hopes of finding a new position, it’s important to think about the process from an employer’s perspective. If you were hiring a project manager, what would you want to see on his or her resume? Chances are, you’d be most interested in the project management skills listed below.
Communication
It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of communication skills in today’s job market. As a project manager, you’ll be expected to communicate effectively with a wide range of internal and external project stakeholders. When you describe your accomplishments in your current or previous roles, highlight the ways you used communication to overcome obstacles and get results. If you include a summary statement at the top of your resume, be sure to mention your communication skills among your other prominent attributes.
Project Leadership
Prospective employers want to see that you understand the importance of leadership and that you have demonstrated it on the projects you’ve managed in the past. Your project manager resume should include details that illustrate your leadership abilities, such as the sizes of the project teams you’ve led in the past, the budgets for which you’ve been responsible, and the challenges you’ve faced. Be sure to focus your resume on the projects that you plan to describe in more detail when you get to the interview stage of the hiring process.
Skills Outside of Project Management
Chances are, you gained expertise in a different field before you made the move into project management. While those other skills may not be the focus of your resume today, it’s still a good idea to tell employers about any other experience you have that may be relevant in a project management role. The more you’ve learned already, the more employers will trust that you can pick up the additional skills you’ll need in your next position.
Technological Skills
Now more than ever before, employers are looking for project managers who know how to use technology to improve project performance. In addition to describing your use of technology as you list your employment history and accomplishments, you may want to include a separate section in your resume to list the project management software that you’re familiar with. These days, cloud-based project management solutions like Planview AdaptiveWork are much more interesting to employers than older, on-premise software.
