How To Build A Standout Digital Project Manager Resume: Tips and Examples
If you're looking for a job in the field of digital project management, you need to have a resume that effectively shows off your skills and experience.
I've been in your shoes, and I've also been the one doing the hiring—reviewing hundreds of resumes from digital project managers. Let me tell you, standing out is everything.
In this article, I'll provide some tips to help you create a kick-ass resume that will get you noticed and help you land your next gig as a digital project manager. I'll also provide some examples and actionable advice to help you showcase your qualifications effectively.
So, let’s dive in and start crafting your perfect digital project manager resume.
Creating Your Digital Project Manager Resume
First and foremost, it's important to note that if your resume is hard to read, what you include in it won't matter. Hiring managers spend just seven seconds scanning a resume before deciding if it goes into the 'yes' or 'no' pile. Use bullet points or short paragraphs to make sure your resume is easy to scan so potential employers can quickly see if you're a good fit. Oh, and don't forget to proofread your resume thoroughly before submitting it.
With that in mind, let's dive into the details.
Key Elements To Include in Your Resume
In terms of what to include on your resume, you’ll want to list your work history, education, and any relevant skills or qualifications. Be sure to also highlight any notable achievements or awards you've received. Things you don't need to include? Your home address, date of birth, and graduation dates—companies will only need this sensitive information once they decide to hire you.
Contact information
Get started on the road to resume success by clearly and plainly listing your name, location, and contact information at the top of your resume.
Personal summary
You may also want to consider including a short profile or objective section before diving into your relevant experience and education. This section isn't always necessary, but can be helpful if your relevant experience is limited. If you choose to include a profile or objective section, make sure to focus on the type of position you are seeking, what you hope to learn, and how you hope to develop yourself. A profile or objective section should be short and to the point, as well as forward-looking.
Work experience
When it comes to your work history, include your current position and any previous positions you’ve held. For each job, list the dates you worked there, your job title, and a brief description of your duties and responsibilities, focusing on the individual projects you've manager and the results you delivered.
Education
In terms of your education, you’ll want to list any relevant degrees, technical project management skills, or certifications you actively hold. Common degree types for digital project managers include: bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, bachelor of business administration or certificates and certifications in project management, marketing, or operations.
If you’re a recent graduate, your education should be at the top of your resume. Include any relevant coursework or internships you've had to help add context to your knowledge and highlight your potential.
Skills
While your skills can and should be highlighted alongside your work experience, it can be helpful to list them in their own section. Make sure to focus on the skills that are most relevant to the role you're applying for. And don't forget to highlight the tools and software you're familiar with.
Awards
If you've been honored with an award for your work, take this opportunity to brag a little! Adding awards to your resume is a great way to show off your accomplishments and the recognition you've earned. They can help you stand out from other candidates and give hiring managers concrete reasons to be impressed by your skills and the impact you've had.
Positioning Your Experience
Let's dig a little deeper into one of the most important sections of your resume: work experience. When crafting your resume, you'll probably spend the most time fine-tuning this section—this is where you'll best be able to showcase your achievements, highlight your impact, and demonstrate how your skills make you a great fit for the role.
If you're applying for digital project management roles, you'll naturally want to highlight your DPM work experience on your resume. Prominently list any previous project management positions you've held, and include any links to work outputs, outcomes, or documentation. You can also list any relevant skills or qualifications you have in this section. If you don’t have any digital project management experience, you can still list other types of experience that may be relevant. This could include any customer service experience, leadership roles, or other positions that required working with teams, including in academic environments.
You should also play close attention to how your projects are presented, and fine-tune your resume to highlight your most important contributions across projects, aligned with the future role you seek. If possible, prepare a small portfolio of high quality example project plans, deliverables, detailed project status reports, communications, workflows, KPI or metric reports, SOWs, or tangible project outcomes to share with an interested hiring manager upon offer or request.
Related: How To Create A Project Management Portfolio For Your Resume
One of the most commonly overlooked elements of digital project management in resumes is managing and engaging stakeholders. How you interact with stakeholders and manage their expectations is almost as important as the work itself! A happy customer is often a good indicator of a successful project, so be sure to include details about your stakeholders (if possible and with permission), engagement with them, and their overall satisfaction in your project deliverable descriptions.
Bonus: Are you a swiss army knife of digital project management? If you have been a graphic designer, marketing manager, project manager, product development manager, SEO or SEM expert, and/or communications manager, you might just be the all-in-one hire a small company is looking for. If so, say it proudly!
Highlighting Certifications, Certificates, and Tools
When recruiters and hiring managers are looking for someone to step in and deliver at a high-level, certifications can be a differentiating factor in their perception of who is equipped and ready to hit the ground running. Certifications demonstrate capability across many different contexts, and there are certifications and certificates for pretty much anything you could imagine!
Digital project managers are likely to compete against other candidates in the job market that have completed certifications and certificates such as:
- Project Management (PMP)
- Agile Methodologies (PMI-ACP, Scrum Master, Product Owner)
- Leadership (Certified Agile Leadership, Leadership Course Certificates)
- Web Development, Digital Design, and SEO Tools
Find out more about the most important project management certifications out there! Or, check out these agile certifications.
If you have these certifications or certificates in these subject areas–great, they are excellent resume builders! If you don’t already have these credentials, consider working towards them to both improve your understanding of the role, your capabilities to perform, and your marketability for future roles! There’s a variety of benefits to digital project management training.
In addition to certifications and certificates, many hiring managers are looking for someone who is familiar with the internal tools their team uses, or someone who has experience with something similar, indicating a potential for new tools to be understood and adopted quickly.
While it might seem basic, be sure to include notes about which productivity, project management solutions, content management, and collaboration tools you are familiar and comfortable with. Here’s some great candidates for inclusion in your list of tools for your resume:
- Google Suite
- Microsoft Office (especially Excel or OneNote)
- Microsoft Project
- Atlassian Jira + Confluence
- Wrike
- Clarizen
- Content Lifecycle Management Tools
- WordPress
- CSS and/or HTML
- SEO tools
Adding Keywords to Your Resume
Many talent acquisition or recruiting systems search submitted resumes for keywords that are relevant to the position. This can be done either automatically and in context by comparing the resume to the job description, or by the recruiter manually. Either way, keywords are essential to getting your resume noticed and having all your hard work pay off! A great place to start looking at keywords is this digital project manager job description.
LinkedIn provides a really cool way to identify keywords associated with specific roles or job titles you might be interested in. To find the keywords most closely associated with a specific job title, go to your profile homepage, click on the more button under your profile header, select build a resume, and click create from profile. Next, enter your target job title or the title for the job you want to land and click apply!
Next, based on the job title entered, LinkedIn will suggest the top keywords or skills most often associated with job postings for those roles! On the right hand side of the screen you will see which keywords are found in your profile, as well as a list of suggested keywords that could make your profile stronger for the role you are targeting!
Review the list of suggested keywords and consider whether you have skills in those areas. If you have those skills, consider adding those keywords to your resume. If there are skills listed that you don’t have, you now have an idea of what would be helpful to learn as you ramp up to take on the new challenge. You can find more relevant skills for project managers here.
To help you get started with keywords, here are some commonly used keywords for roles with the title of Digital Project Manager in no particular order:
- Digital Strategy, Business Development
- Digital Marketing, Digital Media
- Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Marketing Campaigns
- Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing Communications
- E-Commerce, Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Adobe Photoshop, HTML, CSS, WordPress, Software Development Teams
- Marketing Strategies, Leadership, Project Management
- Agile Methodologies, Scrum, Kanban, Project Team Leadership
- Marketing Projects, Marketing Management
- Analytical Skills, Data Analysis, Quality Assurance
- Communication Skills, Problem Solving
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Analytics
- User Experience (UX), Web Design, Web Development
Note and disclaimer from LinkedIn: “We [LinkedIn] recommend only including these keywords in the context of your experience. Do not list them without qualification, or if you do not actually have this experience.”
Using Your Network
Seek a peer, mentor, or friend you respect and with whom you can share that you are brushing up your resume and ask for help! Often when you work on your resume too long by yourself, you might miss something that another reviewer would catch quickly—it’s time to phone a friend!
Do You Really Need A Cover Letter?
When it's time for you to apply for jobs, consider whether a cover letter is appropriate. In many cases now, especially in digital companies, cover letters are not essential and likely won’t mean the difference between getting an interview and being overlooked altogether. A well-written, thoughtful, and relevant cover letter might help you stand out from the crowd but requires significant investment to get right.
If you do choose to invest time into crafting a cover letter, be sure to conduct significant research and consider how the role to which you are applying fits into the strategy of the company, what you uniquely bring to the table and how your contributions can propel the company forward. Hiring managers care less about what you have done, and more about what you can do—focus on the future and highlight how you can add value while making work more enjoyable for all.
Experts Tips For Your Digital Project Manager Resume
In general, these are the rules I live by when reviewing resumes and writing my own:
- Keep it to 1 or 2 pages
- Keep it simple: fancier is not better, readability is key
- Do not include your full home address. City and state or province is enough
- Avoid ageism: do not include graduation dates of your education
- Mitigate bias: do not include a picture of yourself
- Include relevant certifications or coursework in lieu of relevant experience
- Save it as a PDF with your name in the file name
Find more project management resume tips here.
Digital Project Manager Resume Example
Using resume templates and samples is a great way to create a perfect resume. However, it's important to be careful when choosing the right example or template, and to make sure that your resume reflects your own skills and experiences.
Resume Templates And Samples
The first thing many people need when creating their best resume is a template or resume sample to get started! Look no further, The Digital Project Manager is here to help.
There are tons of helpful resume-creation tools on the internet, here are a few of my favorites for Digital Project Managers!
- Check out this resume example/template in Google Docs (can be downloaded to Microsoft Word) to help you get started on your own resume! If you’re extra nosy, you can even look at my resume as a real-life example of a 2-page, senior management-level resume.
The Time Is Now!
Project management is a critical function in any company, and with the rise of digital projects, the need for skilled digital project managers has never been greater. If you're looking to break into this field, it's important to have a resume that showcases your skills and experience. With a hot global job market, it’s time to get to work on your resume!
If you are looking for a job in digital project management, be sure to subscribe to The Digital Project Manager to stay informed about tips, trends and news you need to know about to be effective in your role! Plus, find a list of cool jobs you can do with your project management skills.
