24 Product Management Skills to Boost Your Resume

Product managers are no strangers to juggling a variety of roles – from marketing maestro to scheduling wizard, team leader to occasional IT hero. But what truly distinguishes an excellent product manager? 

The expertise that sets apart a product manager isn’t learned overnight. It’s honed through years of tackling challenges head-on in the field. There’s a wealth of skills involved, so much so that listing them becomes quite a challenge. 

We’ve developed a clear list for you with insights from our seasoned PMs. These essential skills will not only polish your resume but also sharpen your leadership qualities and ability to drive innovation.

We’ll cover: 

• Core Competencies: The signature technical know-how and soft talents of top-tier product managers. 
• Skill Application: Practical tips on how these competencies can be put into action within day-to-day responsibilities. 
• Career Advancement: Insights into how refining these abilities can elevate your professional profile and open doors to new growth prospects.

Hard Skills vs Soft Skills for Product Managers

When differentiating between hard and soft skills, keep in mind that both kinds are crucially important. 

Traditionally, hard skills might have been given top billing – but it’s increasingly clear that soft skills hold equal weight. 

• Hard skills are the technical know-how you bring to the table. They’re the concrete abilities that show up as bullet points on your resume. 
• Soft skills, which are absolutely deserving of space on your resume too, are about how you work with others. They govern how you lead teams, steer projects successfully through choppy waters, and leave a positive mark on those around you. 

We firmly believe these are priority skills for PMs. They’re essential elements for what makes someone excel in this role. Knowing the balance and strength of each is crucial because, as a product manager, you’re as much a diplomat as you are a director. 

Hard Skills You Should Have as a Product Manager

A product manager’s toolkit is incomplete without solid, hard skills. These bedrock skills equip you to tackle the practical side of developing products and strategize with confidence. 

With these abilities, you’re prepared not only to excel in your current role but also to carve out a rewarding career path ahead. 

Hard skills matter because they help you handle everything from seeing through a product’s entire lifecycle to navigating intricate compliance rules with ease. 

Let’s take a look at what hard skills are indispensable.

1. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) 

As the name suggests, the PLM involves steering your product from its inception until it’s time to let go. The key here is to ensure the process is handled with skill and expertise every single day. 

When you’re skilled in PLM, you stay ahead of market shifts, maintain steady production, and ensure the product’s retirement gracefully. You make sure it remains a strong contender for as long as possible.

2. Competitive Analysis 

This skill is all about knowing your opponents better than they know themselves. You need to understand their offerings, strategies, feature sets, and marketplace performance.

By grasping competitive analysis, you’re plotting chess moves that take advantage of where they stumble while shielding yourself from their strengths – all so your product has greater market reach.

3. Market Research 

Understanding market research is crucial. Think of it as obtaining solid facts and figures to support your product decisions. 

This skill requires gathering information about what’s going on with products and services in the marketplace and analyzing them successfully. 

You’ll need to understand customers’ daily rituals, wishes, and headaches to offer something valuable that keeps them coming back.

4. Technical Understanding 

Knowing the techy bits about your product is crucial.

Don’t stress – no one expects you to write code or solder circuit boards. But when you’re talking shop with engineers, you need both sides to understand each other crystal clear with no awkward misinterpretations. 

Get this right, and you’ll see exactly how pieces fit together behind the scenes, transforming your product from doodle pad ideas to hands-on reality.

5. Financial Acumen 

Money talks, and for a product manager, you’ve got to understand its language rather fluently.

Keep an eagle’s eye on budgets while also predicting if it’ll rain cash tomorrow (or hail expenses). Interpreting financial data is key decision-making fuel that keeps your product thriving robustly in markets without turning company pockets inside out.

6. Roadmapping 

A big part of your role involves mapping out a detailed plan called a roadmap. It’s essentially your strategy playbook for where your product is headed. 

This map must reflect larger company goals while clearly communicating how things are progressing with those involved in or using the product. 

7. Regulatory Knowledge 

As a product manager, keeping up with regulations and standards specific to your industry is non-negotiable. 

Staying on top of them is important as they keep changing faster than social media trends. Know these rules inside out because slipping up could land your employer in hot water legally and tarnish their reputation quicker than you can say “compliance.” 

It might seem dull (and something you really want to delegate), but regulatory knowledge skills are crucial to have as a PM.

8. UX/UI Design Principles 

Knowing how users click around (user experience) and what they see on their screens (user interface) helps ensure your products work like a dream. UX and UI design uses this information to make valuable changes that attract more users and retain existing ones.

With these skills, you ensure that your products work well and provide an enjoyable experience for users. 

9. Agile and Scrum Methodologies 

Things change fast, so it’s important to stay nimble with Agile and Scrum methodology and roadmapping. These methodologies will keep you and your team flexible and efficient while enhancing team productivity and quality.

Having this skill is about keeping the team in sync so you can keep churning out top-quality work without wanting to pull your hair out.

10. Analytics and Performance Metrics 

Data is king, queen, and jester, all rolled into one in this gig as a product manager.

You’re expected to dive deep into analytics tools without getting lost at sea. It’s these number-crunching powers that help you see clearly if your product is hitting home runs or striking out – and where things might need greasing up for smooth sailing user experiences.

11. A/B Testing 

Getting down with A/B testing isn’t just splitting hairs over which button color gets more clicks (though that does matter). It is essentially setting up a race between two versions of something to see which sprints ahead based on real people making real choices.

You need a strong game here because these tests are crucial in polishing the details that make users either love or loathe what you’ve built.

12. Up-to-date Tech Knowledge 

If you’re in the product management arena and not keeping up with tech trends, you’re unfortunately just playing catch-up. 

Cybersecurity? Know it. Network administration? Learn it. Infrastructure, DevOps, and app engineering will be part of your playground. 

Staying savvy means that when everyone else is still trying to understand it, you’re already figuring out how to incorporate it into your next update or feature drop.

Soft Skills You Should Have as a Product Manager

Being a great product manager is just as much about understanding the nuts and bolts of your product as it is about how well you work with people. 

You need to have the soft skills that make you an effective leader—the type who can inspire teams, handle complex relationships with clients or stakeholders, and see projects through to the end successfully. 

These are the abilities that help you resolve disputes, present new concepts confidently, or manage times of transformation. 

Your ability to navigate these situations is crucial, and it shapes how others respond to your guidance and ultimately view your leadership capabilities. Let’s jump in and have a look at the soft skills that make up product management. 

1. Communication 

If you can’t talk the talk and actually get people to listen, then product management might not be your game. Communication is king here. We’re talking about getting your point across without putting everyone to sleep or causing a mass exodus from the conference room. 

You need to make sense of complex stuff like it’s child’s play and tune into the grapevine as well – because sometimes what isn’t said is just as important. 

2. Leadership

Ditch any visions of being “the boss.” That won’t fly in product management. True leadership is about rallying the troops and lighting that fire within them so they end up surprising even themselves with what they pull off. 

Set attainable goals, properly equip your team, regularly ask for feedback, and then give them some breathing room.

No one likes a micromanager. Cultivate a vibe where everyone feels their work matters because when people feel good about their job, magic happens (productivity-wise). 

3. Problem-Solving

As the PM, you can’t be the person who just stares at problems until they go away (spoiler alert: they won’t). Instead, you must pick them apart like it’s game day strategy time. 

Find out what’s going wrong, look over your options with a cool head, and decide on the best course of action, even when that decision needs to come down fast.

4. Adaptability

In this line of work, you’ll need to expect change. The market changes its mind often; projects can change course, budgets can get cut, and teammates might take off unexpectedly.

Be prepared to set an example, being adaptable means being calm under pressure and teaching your team how to roll with those punches.

5. Empathy

Empathy can get thrown around like a feel-good buzzword, but it isn’t about group hugs or being your team’s psychologist. 

It really boils down to getting where people are coming from, like your customers who use what you build or your colleagues across their various moods and coffee levels throughout the day. 

It means caring enough about others’ points of view so that when things get rocky, you manage situations thoughtfully rather than reactively.

6. Negotiation

If you’re a product manager, every day can be like an episode of ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’ 

Sometimes, everyone will agree. Other times, everyone seems to think their act deserves center stage. 

Your job is to juggle priorities and devise solutions that make even the fussiest stakeholders nod begrudgingly in approval – because you’ve got the negotiating skills to know what they really want.

7. Conflict Resolution

Can you imagine working where everyone nods along, happily agreeing with one another at all times? 

…neither can we. Conflict is a natural part of teamwork because you have different personalities and opinions when working in close proximity.

Conflicts pop up when people come together to try to build something great. Instead of playing referee, the trick is to guide folks through rough patches so smoothly that they almost forget they were ready for tug-of-war earlier.

8. Persuasion

If you’re gunning for success in product management, your ability to persuade is less about just sweet-talking and more about strategic communication. 

Convince the stakeholders that your plan and roadmaps aren’t just another pie-in-the-sky idea but something that aligns with what they care about and need. 

That way, not only will your project get off the ground, but you’ll also see it to completion.

9. Time Management

Juggling tasks? Classic product manager move. But effective time management doesn’t come about by keeping yourself over-the-top busy. It involves knowing what needs to hit the top of the list and making sure everyone else gets this, too. 

Keep an eye on those deadlines without turning into a taskmaster. Learn to make use of prioritization techniques so that things tick along nicely and nobody wants to chuck their computer out of the window.

10. Critical Thinking

There is no room for ‘yes folk’ in product management. Critical thinking is essential if you want decision-making gold stars. 

Don’t be the person who swallows every bit of information hook, line, and sinker. Have the discernment to get down to brass tacks: What’s biased? What is being assumed? What isn’t being communicated well? 

Sift through potential solutions like you’re on a truth quest to solve problems smarter rather than harder.

11. Active Listening

Essentially, being an active listener means hearing what people say without planning your lunch menu while they talk. 

You need to focus, understand what they are saying, give feedback so they know you’re not zoning out, and lock those details down tight in your memory. 

This isn’t just important for nailing down the facts. It also helps teams work together smoothly – because nothing says “I value you” quite like remembering someone’s words when crunch time hits.

12. Team Building

When you assemble a team, part of your goal is to create a safe and amicable atmosphere. Everyone should feel able to contribute their two cents without getting shot down. 

As a product manager, you’re cultivating your own little professional family (ideally, one that actually listens and doesn’t just nod along while secretly checking Facebook under the table).

Your job is to ensure that team culture is less “dog-eat-dog” and more “let’s-win-together.”

The PMs Hot Take

Landing the role of a product manager means you’ve got more on your plate than just ticking boxes and mapping out schedules. It’s blending tech smarts with people skills—a combo that’ll take you from simply pushing projects along to steering them like a pro. 

Dig into this mix, refine these talents consistently, and what happens? You won’t just toss another gadget or app into the world, you’re going to shape standout moments that stick with folks far beyond their first click or swipe. 

That’s your ticket to leading confidently through the twists and turns of any market mayhem.

Conclusion

So, do you have what it takes to be a product manager? If you’ve got these skills under your belt, you’re well on your way to giving your resume some serious muscle. 

The right skills should get the attention of anyone looking to hire a product manager with the know-how and attitude to match. 

In the business world, it’s not always just about skills. If you want to be the best PM you can be, then be smart about the tools you use. Fibery is developed for product managers by product managers, Essentially, we understand the drill.

So why not give Fibery a try? It’s free for 14 days with no credit card required.

Want more insights on how to up your PM game? Take a look at our blog and resources section. Stay sharp, never stop learning, and make sure that your product manager toolkit is always one step ahead.

FAQ

Q: What skills does a product manager need?

Product managers should have various technical and people-based abilities. They need to understand market trends, guide products through different stages, grasp technology basics, interact clearly, steer teams confidently, and connect with others’ perspectives. 

Being skilled in these areas is crucial for guiding a product from idea to marketplace triumph.

Q: What are the top 3 responsibilities of a product manager?

The core duties include developing a clear plan for what the product will become and how it will get there, making informed decisions on critical features by analyzing customer feedback and market data, as well as guiding diverse teams in bringing products to life efficiently.

Q: What makes a good product manager? 

A successful product manager is someone who thinks ahead, connects well with others, and tackles problems head-on. 

They juggle the nuts and bolts of technology while also understanding people, making sure they can steer through complicated situations to lead their products to success.

Q: What are soft skills in product management?

Soft skills are those traits that let you guide and inspire teams, not just by talking but by truly connecting. Commonly sought-after soft skills include critical thinking, active listening, leadership, and empathy. 

These qualities help you manage everyone’s hopes effectively while keeping your project tightly knit and on track for success.