Project Manager Skills List And Examples
Alison Doyle is a job search expert and one of the industry’s most highly-regarded job search and career experts. Alison brings extensive experience in corporate human resources, management, and career development, which she has adapted for her freelance work. She is also the founder of CareerToolBelt.com, which provides simple and straightforward advice for every step of your career.
For any kind of project, whether it’s releasing an app, building a bridge, or creating an ad campaign, having a project manager in place is essential to ensure the project launches on time, within the budget, and meets expectations.
Project managers are organizational masterminds who create plans and schedules and keep projects on track.
It’s a role that’s needed in nearly every industry. For example, an architecture company will use project managers to handle the development of a new building, while a shampoo company may need one to launch a new product.
Learn more about this in-demand role, and the skills it calls for.
How To Include Project Management Skills On Your Cv
Letâs just go with the fact that CV and resume are interchangeable terms for the purposes of this article.
On my CV, I have a section that covers skills. While I try to make it obvious in the job descriptions and project descriptions, itâs worth calling out what you can do by adding a âSkillsâ heading.
Mine is called âSkills Profileâ. Underneath, I list skills grouped together by:
- Interpersonal skills
Each of those headings has a list of bullet points underneath that give examples of how I have demonstrated those skills.
I donât specifically call out project management skills on my resume here: itâs implied in the list of projects I have led in the work experience section underneath.
However, if you donât have work-related projects, you can add project management skills as one of those headings. Thatâs the bullet point where youâd talk about your ability to do the technical parts of project management.
What Are Project Management Skills
Project management skills are those that are necessary to successfully plan, manage and execute projects. These skills include a combination of hard and soft skills to analyze project performance, manage resources, lead project teams and report progress and results. These skills are important for project managers to successfully plan, manage and execute large organizational projects within prescribed timelines and budgets. Project management skills on your resume demonstrate your ability to analyze, schedule, prioritize and complete tasks.
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Additional Tips For Writing The Best Project Management Resume
Wed like to dedicate this part of our article to give you more tips on how to make your IT project manager resume shine.
Because of the high frequency of project manager resumes hiring companies receive daily, hiring managers will use a keyword tracking system called Applicant Tracking System or ATS .
The ATS program filters out applications that dont have enough keywords in the text. These keywords can be hard skills or relevant industry terminology. The ATS scanners pick these words up and determine whether or not an application has passed their scan test.
On average, hiring managers will only view an application for about 6 seconds after a resume passes the ATS filter check.
Be sure to write your resume in a way where the content is a healthy balance between industry terminology, hard and soft skills. Being able to communicate effectively this balance successfully is crucial.
It is important to understand that your resume must possess information that is both accurate and to the point, and visually understandable. Use bullet points. You only have 6 seconds to get the potential employers attention, after all.
Take a look at a sample resume for more ideas and inspiration. Check out our resume examples .
Things To Keep In Mind When Writing Your Project Management Resume
Crafting a project manager resume can be overwhelming as you need to focus intensively on what to add to your resume and what to avoid. It takes time and patience to pen all the information you want to add to your resume. You have to keep in mind a few things while writing your project management resume. Read further.
- Make sure your resume has the correct format and is well-structured. Your format must be renowned and follow a reverse-chronological resume design. The format is the first thing that showcases your abilities, strengths, and work experience.
- Put your contact details on your resume headings. Mention your updated contact details, email address, and your location. Now, your location does not need to be your exact home address. But you can mention your city or district.
- Your contact details and name must be added to your resumes first section. The second section of the resume should focus on your career objective or summary, education details, skills, and work experience.
- When designing an ATS-compatible resume, promote efficient use of white space, catchyheadings, and straightforward resume typography. Check out various project manager CV examples online to take notes.
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Project Manager Resume Summary Or Objective
Before we dive into the topic of resume objectives and summaries, let’s first set the stage with some definitions:
- Resume summary: A short summary of your work history and accomplishments as a project manager.
- Resume objective: What you are looking for in your next project manager role.
In reality, the line is often blurred between the two, so don’t get too hung up on specific definitions. The key is that you should only include a resume objective or resume summary if it adds real value to your resume.
You should keep your resume to one page, so real estate is valuable. Not to mention hiring managers spend, on average, six seconds reviewing a given resume. Don’t waste your space or divert attention from the hiring manager with a resume objective if it won’t increase your chance of getting an interview.
A professional resume summary should be used for more senior project managers. It should be a very high-level highlight reel of two to three sentences highlighting your biggest accomplishments or goals.
WRONG – generic resume summary
“Experienced project manager with a history of working across departments to achieve goals and positive outcomes on the projects I manage.”
RIGHT – specific project manager resume summary
“PMP certified project manager with 5+ years of experience owning all stages of the project lifecycle from inception through monitoring and closing to deliver projects that exceed expectations on time and under budget.”
WRONG – vague resume objective
List Your Project Manager Skills
The skills section shows the recruiters your professional abilities, so its one of the most important sections in your project manager resume.
Here are some tips on how to list your skills effectively:
- Tailor your skills section for project management. The point of the skills section is to prove to the hiring manager why youre a great candidate for this position, in particular, so listing all of your skills is redundant.
- Include any of the skills you have that the company is looking for. Carefully read the job description and see whether the company has listed any specific skills – if you match them, make sure to include them in your project manager resume.
- Research the most in-demand project management skills. The skills you need largely depend on the field , so research the project management field youre specifically applying to and write down any of the industry-related skills that you have.
- Take a look at your achievements. Not sure which skills you have? Your achievements are proof of your skills, so go back to the work experience section and take a closer look. For example, if you consistently deliver projects before the deadline, youre likely skilled at time management, planning, delegation, etc.
- List your soft skills and hard skills separately. This will make your project manager resume well-organized and easy to navigate.
Need some inspiration on which skills to include in your project manager resume?
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Highlight Your Most Significant Achievements:
- Choose a well-known format, such as the reverse-chronological resume format. This resume format focuses on who you are nowyour abilities, strengths, and experience.
- Make a resume heading with your contact details.
- Divide your resume into the following sections:
- Contact information in the header
- Career Objective/Summary Statement
- Education Skills Work Experience
- Sections Not Included
- Make effective use of white space, eye-friendly headings, and clear resume typefaces when writing your resume for ATS-compatible resume.
- What is the ideal length for a resume? If you have a lot of job experience, a two-page resume is a good idea. If not, a one-page resume template should be enough.
- And now for one of the most crucial resume hints. To preserve the layout of your project management resume template, save it as a PDF. Word documents and other file formats have the potential to obliterate your formatting.
Project Manager Resume Education
Project management is a role that requires lots of human interaction, flexibility, and creativity.
And you donât learn this anywhere in school.
So you might ask:
Why do I need to include an education section in my resume anyway?
Think of it this way:
If youâre the hiring manager and had to cut a list from 1000s of candidates down to a dozen ones, what would your criteria be?
Youâll now focus on the secondary features of the applicants.
You want to hire someone who has all that, plus some relevant educational background.
Your resume needs an education section. Of course, you wonât detail out everything you learned since primary school. In fact, youâll do the exact opposite.
Youâll list your highest school degree, the university or college you went to, and the duration you spent there.
Check out this example:
RIGHT
All in all, the required degree depends on the industry the hiring company operates in.
Most often, those companies ask for a Bachelorâs in management or business. But sometimes they only hire candidates from technical fields such as computer science and IT.
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What Are The Top Seven Project Management Skills
- Effective communication
Project managers connect the companys vision and goals with their teams. Project managers need to communicate effectively for team members to effectively understand and carry out the companys goals without confusion. They can do this through effective communication with their team, both verbally and in writing. Effective non-verbal communication, like active listening, is also an important skill as it enables project managers to fully understand issues or concerns that arise.
- Time management
Time management skills are crucial to effectively and efficiently completing projects on schedule. This skill set allows project managers to take complex projects and break them down into smaller and more manageable tasks that can get completed on time. However, all projects have deadlines, and to meet these deadlines, project managers need to efficiently manage their own time and the teams time to ensure projects are completed by deadlines.
- Project planning, scheduling and budgeting
All projects require proper planning and scheduling which allows employees to complete them in the most efficient way possible.
Good project managers should also possess the technical skills to utilize project management software, which allows them to plan, schedule and budget their tasks and meet company goals.
- Critical thinking
- Problem-solving
- Risk management
What Are The Core Skills Of A Project Manager
Skills like knowing how to set up the right workflows in Asana and understanding the agile principles are important aspects of project management. However, some of the core project management skills include making your project team feel valued, motivated, and trusted to do the job.
These are called soft skills, and they are project manager essentials.
Project managers must be able to get the best out of people, create harmonious relationships between team members, and design a positive working environment.
But there are other skills needed to be a project manager, of course. In addition to soft skills, some of the technical skills required to excel include budgeting, risk management, and planning and forecasting skills.
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Highlighting Project Manager Skills On A Resume
The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed’s data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.
Project managers rely on a combination of soft skills and hard skills to create results and achieve success. When applying for project management positions, It can be highly important to include these types of skills on your resume to show employers how you can be a good fit for the job.
You can also take several steps to make sure you highlight your skills in a way that sets you apart from other candidates.
In this article, you will learn why it’s important to include your project manager skills on a resume, how to list these skills on your resume and some of the most effective project manager skills to showcase on your resume.
Leadership And Teamwork Skills
Project managers supervise and direct teams of employees, so including how your leadership skills have helped you become an effective and successful leader is important to include on your resume. Additionally, including your teamwork skills can also show employers how you value working with your staff to complete projects and accomplish goals.
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What To Have In A Senior Project Manager Resume
All senior project managers should use the following resume sections:
- Specializations
- Summary of your four core skills and accomplishments youve achieved using them
- A bulleted skills summary that includes general or agency project management, your niche, and value-added leadership
- A career progression section with your previous job listings and a bulleted list of notable companies and/or achievements at each one
But Wait Thats Not All You Also Get
- Entrée to exclusive online member communities, Local Sections, Technical Divisions and Forums and Technological Communities
- Preferred rates on AIChE conferences attend just one conference a year and your AIChE membership pays for itself
- Members-only group rates on comprehensive insurance products
- Substantial discounts on courses, conference recordings and webinars at the AIChE Academy
- Preferred member discounts at Office Depot®, Avis® and Hertz®, The UPS® Store, hotels and cruises, online shopping and more
- Savings on books, magazines and journals
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Architectural Project Manager Skills And Qualifications
- Architectural experience – architectural project managers need extensive architectural experience along with a state license, which requires the completion of the Architect Registration Exam
- Drafting and engineering – experience with drafting building plans and blueprints is also essential to an architectural project manager’s role, since they are responsible both for developing plans and reviewing drafts developed by other architects
- Personnel management – because they direct and oversee contractor activities and often work with teams of architects and designers, architectural project managers should also have a background in personnel management
- Project management – with so much of this role requiring high-level planning, schedule management, and coordination, architectural project managers need extensive experience in project management best practices
- Communication skills – an architectural project manager spends significant time corresponding both with clients and contractors, so they need effective written and verbal communication skills
- Problem-solving skills – over the course of construction projects, circumstances can change and issues can arise, so architectural project managers need to be agile problem-solvers to prevent delays and see projects through to completion
Writing Your Cv Profile
Your CV profile is a short introductory paragraph that summarises your experience and the benefits of hiring you.
Sitting at the very top of your CV, the profile plays a very important role. It needs to grab readers attention and ensure they read the rest of your CV. If your profile doesnt contain the information that relevant recruiters want to see, they may just shut your CV straight down and move onto the next one in their inbox.
You need to make your CV profile count.
The idea is to give readers a well-rounded summary of what you do and the benefits of employing you as a project manager. It needs to be short, sharp and punchy delivering just enough information to entice the reader in and instantly make them think you could be the right candidate for the job.
As a project manager, your profile should ideally include some of the following details:
- Type of projects or programmes you lead
- Industries worked in
- Size and scale of projects
- Impact of your projects
- Specialisms within project management e.g. planning, leading workshops etc.
Here is an example of a typical project manager profile try and keep yours around the same length and keep it very high level.
Do not write your reasons for applying to roles in your CV profile save them for your cover letter.
Core skills
A core skills section is a very simple but effective section you can add to the bottom of your profile.
Here is an example from a candidate applying for a digital project management role:
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What Skills To Choose
We aim for a CV to be a couple of pages. Iâve had to read resumes that were over 5 pages and frankly I lost the will to live. Itâs too much, and too much detail. And there was a lot of jargon that meant nothing to me.
As you want to keep your application concise and to the point, youâll need to be a little choosy about the project management skills that make it onto your resume.
The good news is that you donât have to make that call yourself.
Use the job listing, job description, or personal profile to help you uncover what skills the hiring manager is looking for.
Many employers use sifting tools that look for keywords. They will program in keywords from the advert so those are definitely the ones to focus on.
Below, weâll look at some examples of common project management skills for your resume.