Project Management / Manager CV Tips and Template

Your CV is your selling tool, it is the first thing prospective employers and agencies look at and it is the best way to make yourself stand out from the crowd. So it is definitely worth spending some time making it perfect.

This section will give you some hints and tips on improving your CV and help you in the first step to securing your ideal project management role.

1. CV Layout

This is vital, remember prospective employers probably look at hundreds of CVs and a clear, concise CV which shows your skills and experience is going to be noticed a lot faster than an over worded jumble.

Remember is make it look professional, adding colours and exotic fonts might make it look pretty but this is a professional document and an insight into you as a person and a project management professional. Organised, structured, disciplined, professional these words do not scream blue and pink with italic font and pretty pictures!

With regards to literary narrations there are lots of opinions on how to write a CV. In my opinion I think the most professional way is to write it in the 3rd party i.e. ‘A professional team player with excellent communication skills’ sounds a lot better than John is a professional team player…..’ which sounds like you are writing a story or ‘I am a professional team player’.

2. Contact Details

Without wanting to sound condescending name, address and contact details at the top please – you’ll be surprised at the number of people who forget contact details or forget to update telephone numbers when they change their mobile or move house.

Employers want to be able to get hold of you quickly and without too much effort so make it easy for them. While I’m on this subject and just a point worth thinking about – if you are looking for a job and you’ve got your CV out there please please please put an answering machine on your mobile! If you are difficult to get hold off people will give up and move onto the next CV.

3. Your Profile

This is a statement which sums you up - a bit of information about you. This needs to entice your reader to want to learn more and read on so it needs to be snappy and to the point. Try to consider your skills using words which are appropriate to the type of role you are looking for so in project management words such as:
Prince 2 Practitioner, APMP qualified, proven stakeholder management skills, experienced managing teams in a matrix environment and so on.

4. Education OR Career Highlights

This is where each CV needs to be tailored to suit the individual.

Junior candidates who are looking for their first steps onto the career path would put the education here to ‘beef’ up their CV and show consistency in education and the ability to work through and gain a qualification.

For those of you with stacks of experience this section is best placed for your career highlights so far. Include success stories of projects managed. Employers want to know figures – they want to read budgets managed, team sizes, duration of project and key words such as ‘completed within budget and to time’.

5. Career History

In reverse chronological order (i.e. start with the most recent).

Similar to career highlights employers want facts. They want to know what you do / did, who you manage (numbers) what is your budget responsibility, methodology used, types of project managed. You must include company name, job title, date started and date finished. It is not enough to put in just the year. Employers need to know months too – they like to see your career path and see if there are any gaps in your CV. Give brief explanations for periods of not working.

It can also be helpful to give sound reasons for why you left a position. This is particularly true if you have moved around quite a bit or have taken on a number of short term contracting roles. It stops the client asking the question; “why did they leave?”.

6. Technical / Software Knowledge

This section is for all you Engineering / IT / Technical Project Managers who should highlight technical knowledge. Make this section short but key word rich. However, don’t over do it as a CV that lists every software possible suggests the person knows little in-depth. Only list an item if you are happy to answer a question on it otherwise you might get to interview but certainly no further.

7. Education

If you didn’t put it at the top of your CV then here is a good place. List all qualifications in reverse chronological order and include all dates.

8. Hobbies/Interests

There is school for thought that this is an irrelevant section as recruiting employers are only interested in your skills and it is none of their business what you get up to outside work hours. This is totally up to you and should you want to include interests then go for it. If you are going to include something here make sure it is of interest and ideally a topic of conversation for interview. Please don’t include anything if you are just going to say “socialising with friends, travel and films”.

9. Length of CV

There is a rule that a CV should be no more that two pages long which is great for someone with a couple of years work history, not so easy for the experience programme manager with many years of contracting under their belt.

Four pages should ideally be the maximum length and three pages ideal. Any longer and you’re really in danger of loosing the interest of the prospective employer. Don’t take this as an opportunity to reduce the font size as small as possible to cram everything in. Use bullet points to highlight key points which are relevant and refrain from long sentences and multiple paragraphs.

Remember that your CV has to be easy to read and clearly laid out as it might initially get no more than a ten second scan. Bullets and short sentences work, paragraphs don’t.

Download Project Manager CV Template