How To Write a Product Owner Resume
To create a product owner resume, combine your experience, skills, and education with resume-appropriate storytelling and an understanding of the employer’s needs. This guide shows how to tailor your resume to each position and provides specific tips for the types of skills and verbs you might want to use.
As a product owner, you likely have plenty of experience understanding and communicating product requirements and specs. Apply those skills to understanding what the employer wants from a candidate and communicating about your skills and knowledge in a way that helps hiring managers see you’re the right person for the job.
- Entry-level
- Mid-career
- Senior-level
1. Write a dynamic profile summarizing your product owner qualifications
This section of your resume sets the tone for the entire document. In two to four sentences, capture the essence of who you are as a candidate and why you’re the ideal fit for the position. Emphasize your ability to create value for your teams, customers, and organizations.
Approach this section as you would a short project or product blurb, capturing the most important information for the target audience. Reference your years of experience, the types of products you’ve worked with, and any notable industry accomplishments.
Profile Example #1
A recent graduate with entry-level work experience specializing in project management, Scrum, Agile, and business analysis. Adept at collaborating with cross-functional teams to execute projects and ensure on-time product delivery.
Profile Example #2
A Product Owner with three years of professional experience, specializing in project management, Agile, Scrum, and product management. A proven track record of collaborating with cross-functional teams across all phases of the product life cycle. Adept at creating user stories to drive product enhancements and feature development.
2. Showcase your product owner experience
This section serves two main purposes. It showcases your experience, providing real-world context about your qualifications and skills. It also helps the employer understand the value you might bring to their organization.
Consider building the bullet points in this section by combining action verbs, specific skills, and measurable accomplishments. For example, you might write that you leveraged user stories to create product development feedback loops, leading to a 20% increase in user adoption.
When possible, think about the products and needs of each employer. Tailor this section of your resume to show off accomplishments most relevant to the position you’re applying to. For instance, if a company is looking for a candidate with strong leadership capabilities, you could showcase examples of you liaising between cross-functional teams and stakeholders to communicate product requirements.
Professional Experience - Example #1
Associate Product Owner Intern, ArkTech Software, Cincinnati, OH
May 2021 – Present
- Coordinate with the scrum team and product manager to support delivery across all phases of the product life cycle for a software company, including identifying product defects, managing product backlogs, and analyzing KPIs to define strategies
- Perform quality assurance testing on product features, analyze feedback and user data, and create user stories to validate action plans and product enhancements
- Drive the development of product roadmaps in alignment with Agile methodologies
Professional Experience - Example #2
Product Owner, Southwest Software Corp., Portland, OR
May 2019 – Present
- Partner with stakeholders and product managers to evaluate customer needs and develop new features for POS software solution products
- Analyze feedback and data from customers to create user stories and identify opportunities to enhance product quality and improve the customer experience
- Coordinate with cross-functional teams to define strategic vision for the products, which includes developing product roadmaps and creating business strategies
3. Outline your education and product owner-related certifications
Including your educational background can help an employer understand whether your knowledge aligns with their needs — especially if they require or prefer someone with a certain type of degree. For example, if an employer wants someone with project management experience and prefers a related degree, including your credentials helps ensure your resume makes it through initial reviews.
Ensure you talk about your credentials in ways employers will understand. Don’t just state that you have a CSPO certification, for example. Spell it out by listing that you are a Certified Scrum Product Owner.
Education
Template
- [Degree Name]
- [School Name], [City, State Abbreviation] | [Graduation Year]
Example
- Bachelor of Business Engineering (B.B.A.) in Project Management
- University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH | 2021
Certifications
Template
- [Certification Name], [Awarding Organization], [Completion Year]
Example
- Certified Associate Project Manager (CAPM), Project Management Institute | Expected 2022
4. List key skills and proficiencies for product owners
A strong, relevant key skills list can help you make a good first impression with your resume. Recruiters and hiring managers may look for these lists to weed out irrelevant applicants quickly, and if you don’t have a skills list at all, they may ignore your application.
You can also incorporate skills throughout your professional experience section to help create a context for your past work. For example, you might write that you “developed acceptance criteria to increase positive outcomes for products” or you “implemented Jira processes to support a 15% increase in efficiency for product teams.”
Here are some skills relevant to product owner positions:
| Key Skills and Proficiencies | |
|---|---|
| Acceptance criteria | Agile methodology |
| Business analysis | Cross-functional leadership |
| Data-driven decision-making | DevOps |
| Feature development | Jira |
| Kanban | Product development |
| Product management | Product owner |
| Project management | Quality assurance (QA) |
| Research and development (R&D) | Scaled agile framework (SAFe) |
| Scrum | Software as a Service (SaaS) |
| Software development life cycle (SDLC) | Stakeholder management |
| Team management | User stories |
| Validation testing | Waterfall |
How To Pick the Best Product Owner Resume Template
Always start with a template you can easily customize to capture your experience and skills best while speaking directly to the employer’s needs. This means choosing a document that works in a program you’re accustomed to using and avoiding templates with design flourishes you can’t work well around.
Consider templates that keep things simple and support easy-to-read documents with plenty of organization and white space. Because product owners often significantly impact products and outcomes for businesses, choose a template that lets you spend time communicating your key contributions to past employers in a way that demonstrates what you can do for a potential employer.
Product Owner Text-Only Resume Templates and Examples
- Example #1
- Example #2
- Example #3
Cynthia Steinbeck
(123) 456-7890
[email protected]
123 Your Street, Portland, OR 12345
Profile
A Product Owner with three years of professional experience, specializing in project management, Agile, Scrum, and product management. A proven track record of collaborating with cross-functional teams across all phases of the product life cycle. Adept at creating user stories to drive product enhancements and feature development.
Professional Experience
Product Owner, Southwest Software Corp., Portland, OR
May 2019 – Present
- Partner with stakeholders and product managers to evaluate customer needs and develop new features for POS software solution products
- Analyze feedback and data from customers to create user stories and identify opportunities to enhance product quality and improve the customer experience
- Coordinate with cross-functional teams to define strategic vision for the products, which includes developing product roadmaps and creating business strategies
Associate Product Manager, Better Technology Inc., Portland, OR
May 2018 – May 2019
- Owned KPIs for products, developed user stories and acceptance criteria, and led initiatives to transform product vision into new features
- Collaborated with the product management team to identify automation opportunities and refine Agile delivery processes across the organization
- Conducted root cause analysis to identify product defects and create solutions
Education
Bachelor of Science in Project Management
University of Portland, September 2014 – May 2018
Key Skills
- Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
- Product Management
- Agile Methodology
- Acceptance Criteria
- Feature Development
- Quality Assurance
Certifications
- Certified Associate Project Manager (CAPM), 2020
- Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP), Expected 2022
Frequently Asked Questions: Product Owner Resume Examples and Advice
What are common action verbs for product owner resumes?-
Incorporating the right verbs into your resume conveys action and impact. In short, they help you quickly tell employers what you did and why it mattered. For product owners often charged with pleasing customers and internal stakeholders, starting sentences and bullet points with action verbs helps create a format that tells the story of those achievements.
For example, saying that you “executed on client requirements to drive a 15% increase in customer satisfaction” is more dynamic than simply listing “client requirements” and “customer satisfaction” as skills or duties.
Check out some of these action verbs to include on your product owner resume:
| Action Verbs | |
|---|---|
| Aligned | Championed |
| Collaborated | Conducted |
| Cultivated | Defined |
| Developed | Directed |
| Educated | Executed |
| Guided | Improved |
| Influenced | Managed |
| Oversaw | Owned |
| Prioritized | Resolved |
| Spearheaded | Validated |
How do you align your resume with a product owner job description?-
Think of your resume as a product and the potential employer as a unique customer. That customer has specific preferences, and your product is customizable. Tailor it by reading the employer’s job description and noting relevant phrases and skills you can include on your resume.
For example, if the employer emphasizes experience with SaaS solutions in the job description, include that entire term and the abbreviation SaaS on your resume if you have the relevant skills.
While the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t provide data specifically for product owner roles, it notes that a similar role — project management specialists — is expected to grow at a rate of 6% through 2032. Whatever the market does with regard to a specific position, aligning your resume with employer job descriptions makes you a more competitive candidate.
What is the best product owner resume format?-
Reverse chronological is usually the ideal format for your resume, as it helps to tell the story of your career and growing experience in a concise, accessible manner. This format positions your experience from the most recent jobs to older positions. An employer can easily see your rise from supporting product development roles to leadership. If you’re making a career change, a combination format may be appropriate, as it allows you to feature relevant certifications and industry terms toward the top of your resume.
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Whatever format you end up with for your resume, consider pairing it with a cover letter. A custom cover letter for each application provides the opportunity to connect with employers on a more personal level or ensure your most impressive credentials or accomplishments are highlighted. Our product manager resume cover letter example provides a jumping-off point for crafting your cover letters, but be sure to tailor each to the employer you’re interested in.
