Project Manager CV Examples

A strong CV for project managers demonstrates your skills and results, backed by quantifiable, measurable achievements from your past work. The goal is to present a track record of your accomplishments in project management, not your duties, and you should always tailor it to the job you're applying for.

Like in any of our project manager (PM) CV samples on this page, it should start with a targeted professional summary, then describe your work experience, and list your skills relevant to the target role. Besides core skills like stakeholder management, include tools (Jira, Asana, Trello, and so on) and your work methodologies, such as Agile or Scrum.

Additionally, if you have any project management certificates, they should be included in a dedicated certifications section. Regarding the layout, keep it clean and readable for both recruiters and applicant tracking systems (ATS).

A good professional summary for a project management CV represents a brief overview of your most important accomplishments and skills. It should convey your professional identity as a project manager and make the hiring manager or recruiter want to keep reading.

Don't go into too much detail. Instead, bring up the biggest wins from your career and list your most important professional competencies. A two- to four-line paragraph is usually enough. A good project manager can express themselves efficiently and effectively.

We've already mentioned the importance of listing relevant skills in a strong project manager CV example. The skills section includes your core PM skills (stakeholder management, risk mitigation, cost allocation, etc.), industry-relevant tools such as Jira or Trello, and the methodologies you use in your work (Lean, Waterfall, Agile).

To make your project manager CV as effective as possible, always read and analyse the job description, which lists the required skills. Besides adding them to the skills list, also try to weave them into the bullet points in your work experience section.

Keywords are particularly important for applications that go through ATS platforms, which is the case in many bigger companies. Just like recruiters, these scanners are looking for specific keywords to determine whether you're a strong fit for the job, and they usually include the required skills. If your project manager's CV doesn't pass the ATS, it's unlikely to reach a human reader.

It's also important to keep the document easily scannable, so we recommend a simple, clean layout and formatting. Using many graphic elements, tables, or boxes can cause problems, and the content might not be parsed correctly.

Optimising a project manager's CV for an ATS means making it easy for the scanners to read and sort the content. To avoid any risk with text parsing, you should generally avoid complex and design-heavy formats and layouts. See our selection of project manager CV examples.

In addition to the clean, simple structure, you should use standard section headings (such as Professional Summary, Work Experience, Skills, Certifications, and Education) and fonts. Also, try to include as many keywords as possible by naturally weaving them into your achievements and listing them in a dedicated skills section.

As you can see in our project manager CV examples, your biggest strength should be your achievements, rather than the design of your document. For project management professionals, we always suggest keeping the design minimal. Adding an accent colour is totally fine, but it shouldn't have many graphic and visual elements. Besides distracting a recruiter or hiring manager, it can also cause problems with the ATS.

You should also stick with standard, professional fonts, such as Calibri, Arial, or Helvetica.