Top 7 Product Manager Core Competencies — Edward Woolley

2 min readFeb 24, 2021

Originally published at https://www.edwardwoolley.com on February 24, 2021.

The Job market has picked up recently — what with the vaccine and all Idk 🤷🏻‍♂️ — and Product management is a hot growing industry, so I took the opportunity to revamp my CV

I surveyed the industry, to get an idea of what hiring managers want from PMs in 2021, and eventually distilled all my findings down into 7 core competencies, which I hope you find useful

NB: because they were intended for my own resume, the descriptions have been written subjectively — tho you can surely get some inspiration from them — whilst the headings — as well as the parts highlighted in bold — are pretty much universal product management skills.

Relationship Management & Leadership:

Empathetic servant leader approach. Understand & represent the needs of all stakeholders, and enable & empower them to reach their full potential.

Research & Design

Establish a deep understanding of consumer needs, thru my empathetic approach to product discovery; which drives my design decisions and delivers products that emotionally connect with users.

Creative Conceptual Thinking & Communication

Take highly abstract organisational information and distil it into clear, compelling concepts for all stakeholders — aligning them around the organisational goals. My creativity, vision, and communication creates company cohesion.

Cohesive Cross-Functional Teams:

Foster collaboration across stakeholders & departments and align them around the vision, to unlock the innate collective power of cross-functional teams.

Decisions & Prioritisation

My natural aptitude to “see the bigger picture”, and prioritise roadmap decisions, is built upon keeping a constant connection with the team, the business, the customer, and the wider market. Maximise work not done, thru product discovery. Make tough decisions, to ensure targets are met.

Data & Metrics

Define KPIs, which capture the value customers are receiving, that indicate the long term growth potential and secure buy-in from stakeholders.

Product Lifecycle Management & Business Ownership

Manage the entire end-to-end product lifecycle — from initial concept right through to market launch, growth, scaling, and even end of life — and I have the wider business experience — everything from HR & law to marketing & sales — to deliver products which are: scalable, sustainable and commercial.

For your Resume, you’ll just want a simple list of your skills — you can drop their descriptions (they are more just my thought process) — and the experience section is where you’ll showcase them in action.