Aug 17, 2023 · 5 min read
The hiring process often feels like a black box. You craft a resume, send it into the void, and hope for the best. Much of the advice out there is geared toward "beating the ATS" (Applicant Tracking System) or gaming some automated algorithm.
But as someone who has reviewed thousands of resumes for product roles, I can tell you that much of this conventional wisdom misses the mark. At Juro, and many other companies focused on quality hires, we read every resume. We aren’t looking for keyword density. We’re looking for a compelling story about your capabilities.
A resume isn't a checklist of skills; it’s your sales pitch. Here’s what actually matters when I’m reading yours.
The biggest myth in product management job hunting is that you need to stuff your resume with keywords to get past a machine. When a human reads your resume, a long, undifferentiated list of "Skills" (Agile, JIRA, Roadmapping, Figma, SQL) is almost useless.
Listing a skill doesn't prove you have it. Anyone can write "Product Strategy" or "User Research" on a piece of paper.
I'm looking for demonstrated expertise. I need to see how you used a skill and what the outcome was.
Don't say: "Conducted user research."
Do say: "Conducted 30+ customer interviews which identified a key workflow gap, leading to the development of a feature that increased user engagement by 20%."
Don't say: "Responsible for the product roadmap."
Do say: "Overhauled the product roadmap by implementing a new prioritization framework based on the RICE model, leading to a 15% faster delivery of high-impact features."
Specificity is everything. If you can’t articulate how you used a skill to achieve a meaningful business outcome, it carries very little weight.
There’s a popular piece of advice that says "quantify everything." This often leads to product resumes filled with meaningless metrics. I've seen things like:
These numbers tell me nothing about your effectiveness. Writing documents and managing a backlog is part of the job, not an achievement. I care about outcomes, not activity.
Metrics are only powerful when they are tied to clear business objectives. Instead of the number of A/B tests you ran, tell me about the winning variant that lifted conversion by 5% and what you learned from the losers.
Equally important is clarifying your specific contribution. I often see candidates claim credit for a team's success. If a bullet point says, "Launched a product that resulted in $10M ARR," I need to understand your role. Were you the PM who defined the MVP, ran the beta program, and led the go-to-market strategy, or did you join the team post-launch to manage minor bug fixes?
Be honest and specific about what you did. Taking undue credit is a quick way to lose trust during the interview process.
Ideas are cheap; execution is everything. In any high-growth environment, the ability to take ownership and drive results is the most valuable currency. I'm constantly looking for evidence of two traits: initiative and persistence.
Initiative: I want product managers who see a problem and proactively solve it without waiting to be told what to do. Show me instances where you identified an inefficiency and fixed it. This could be noticing high customer churn and spearheading a project to redesign the onboarding flow, creating the company's first public-facing roadmap, or building a new process for triaging customer feedback from sales and support.
Persistence: Building anything meaningful takes time and involves hitting roadblocks. I look for signals that you can push through challenges. This is why I’m cautious about resumes with many short stints (e.g., five jobs in five years). While job changes are sometimes necessary, consistent jumping suggests you might not stay long enough to make a deep impact or solve a truly hard customer problem. I want builders who are committed to seeing things through.
I see a lot of resumes that look exactly the same, especially from aspiring PMs. They use identical templates and highlight the same generic case studies.
The product management equivalent of a "cookie-cutter" project is a superficial redesign of a famous app like Spotify or a conceptual "Uber for X" proposal. These exercises are fine for learning, but they often lack deep insight into the actual business constraints, technical trade-offs, and user problems that drive real-world product decisions.
What makes your experience unique? What perspective can you bring that nobody else can? Maybe it's deep expertise in a niche B2B vertical, a story about navigating a particularly complex stakeholder negotiation, or an insightful analysis of a failed product launch and what you learned from it.
Use the space on your resume to highlight what genuinely differentiates you, not just to prove you can follow a standard case study format.
The best resumes are clear, specific, and focused on impact. They tell a story about what you have built, the problems you have solved, and the tangible business value you have delivered. Focus on substance over style, and make it easy for the hiring manager to understand why you are the right person for the job.