Today we are going to talk about the data product manager resume and what you need to do to land the interview and get hired – with as little effort (on your part) as possible.

Make sure to read to the end because that’s where I’m going to show you my Data Product Manager Resume Template and how to get your own plug-in-play version of it for free.

YouTube URL: https://youtu.be/CIUu1nm_oQ0

If you prefer to read instead of watch, then read on…

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As far as why I’m qualified to give advice on data product management – I first started building and leading data products way back in 2012, and since then I’ve managed and delivered data and machine learning information products that have been purchased and consumed by over 1.7 million people.

If you’re new around here… Hi, I’m Lillian Pierson and I support data professionals in becoming world-class data leaders and entrepreneurs.

While, yes – I can just give you the data product manager template… But you also need to see how to use it. So let me walk you through that process first.

Step 1. Find a representative Data Product Manager job posting

To pick a representative job posting, you have to start by getting super clear on what you want and what you have to offer. Start by answering the following questions:

• What lifestyle requirements must the job afford you in order for you to be happy in the role?
• Any income requirements? What are your income requirements?
• As for the aspects of the data product manager role, what do you love doing (and are great at)?
• How about the aspects of the data product manager role? What do you not love doing (and aren’t great at)?

I will demonstrate.

Lifestyle & Income Parameters

I have lived on an island in Thailand for 8 years. Well, I am not going anywhere. So, I would only look at job postings that are listed as “remote” on LinkedIn.

I’m an American living on the US Dollar and working with US Companies, so I need to set the location for job posting as “United States”. Jobs  in developing countries won’t cover my living expenses, even here in Thailand.

Experience & Expertise Parameters

Within data science, analytics, and product management, my areas of expertise center around:

• Data Companies, Products, and Services
• Ecommerce
• Digital Marketing
• Engineering 

As far as things I can hang my hat on, those could include: 

• Machine learning
• Professional engineer licensure
• Successful entrepreneur for 9 continuous years
• Product development experience
• Proven track record for leading highly profitable product launches

Notice how the representative job postings are all in sectors where I have already planted my flag?

Now I am going to jot down the links of job posts that seem like a good fit.

• 1st job: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2587650613
• 2nd job: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2571805791 
• 3rd job: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2658840200

As for an example of job postings that would not be a good fit for me and my background…

Obviously, I am not going to pick a job posting as representative if it is looking for a decade of full-time, on-the-job data governance work. I don’t even have a decade of full-time employment experience, sooo… I would aim towards a job posting that aligns with my strengths. Honestly, this posting looks a lot like they are looking for a data manager with a product-bent. It’s a real estate start-up, which isn’t in my subject matter expertise… so this Juno Data Product Manager position is not representative of what I would be looking for if I were looking for a data product manager  job.

Step 2. Generate the resume keywords

I have no affiliation with this resume keyword tool, but it’s free and it mines job postings for key words for you so I am going to use it. The tool is Resume Worded and you can check it out for yourself here: https://resumeworded.com/job-description-keyword-finder 

How this works is you just go over to the job description and copy it into Resume Worded to identify resume keywords. I added all three descriptions from all the jobs I like because I want to get a generalized view of keyword priorities.

The tool requires you to upload your resume to act as a template, so I just fed it blank resume template. Of course, it isn’t going to find matches between the job posting and a blank resume template, but I don’t care about that – all I am looking for is a generalized representation of keywords that are a priority. It says that it uses NLP to fill in gaps and group words effectively but I suggest you look at the right side of what it returns to make sure that it’s model provided accurate predictions. 

Thee original results look like this:

But when I eyeballed the sample data I saw some groupings that were misaligned. Those are:

• Digital products
• Analytics products

I copy out the results of the tool, apply some inferences and come up with a list of 18 important keywords, in order of decreasing importance. I notate the context of the word’s usage in parenthesis below:

1. Teams
2. Analytics (teams, partners, providers, products)
3. Design (teams, roadmap, product, features, applications)
4. Customer (-facing, success, opportunities, focused)
5. Engineering
6. Stakeholders
7. Building
8. Machine Learning (products)
9. MBA
10. Marketing
11. KPI
12. Product Design
13. Product Roadmap
14. Features
15. Strategy
16. Partnership
17. Functions
18. Product Development

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below… tell me, what’s your favorite thing about the data product manager role?!

Step 3. Populate your resume and its theme

From here, knowing what to emphasize on your data product management resume should be no-brainer. You just need to detail the ways your professional experience embodies the key words, making sure to add relevant details on as many quantitative results you’ve generated. If you did something cool and that you’re proud of, but that thing is not related to the keywords, I wouldn’t include it.

I’ll show you a snippet of the example resume I created based on my experience and the keywords identified above….

Speaking of careers in data product management, I’ve published a self-taught curriculum for data product managers that you can check out here.

Step 4. Customize your resume theme for the company

Notice how “design” is the #3 keywords on the list above? That’s because product managers are expected to at least be proficient in basic aspects of design (and managing design teams). The reason that company-themed resumes can be especially helpful in landing a job as a product manager is because data product managers are expected to be design-proficient.

Like I said, I created a free data product manager resume template for you to use (get it at the bottom of this post), but in addition to adding your professional details, I suggest you also customize the CV according to the brand colors and font of the company you are applying to.

To identify exactly what those are, I use the following free Chrome extensions:

• FontPicker
• ColorPick Eyedropper

So for my example, I looked at the website of Demand Science and customized my CV to their branding. It came out looking like this:

If you want to take a closer look at my own data product manager cv, you can do so here.

Branding your resume to the company only takes a few minutes inside Canva! Good luck!