Product Designer Resume: Prototyping a Winning Resume

Resume writing can be a painstaking, pressure-filled process. Any mistakes could lead to a poor user experience and make you a forgettable candidate. So, we created a hiring manager-approved roadmap to streamline your creation of a successful product designer resume.

Hiring managers are on the lookout for some core pieces of information when hiring a new product designer. They understand that product designers hold the blueprint for the success of a company, so they don't make their decisions lightly.

Our resume builder has helped more than 100,000 professionals secure roles at companies like Google, Dropbox, and Apple. Now, we'll help you expedite the resume writing process by showing you what content and formatting hiring managers want to see on your product designer resume.

4 Competencies a Product Designer Resume Should Cover

Hiring managers and recruiters seek product designers who have experience in all stages of product design. Your product designer resume needs to show you have experience across four core competencies of product design — research, design, testing, and execution.

1. Consumer Research

Hiring managers need to know that you take a consumer-driven approach to product design. Your resume needs to provide examples of times you conducted user-research to fully understand consumers’ pain points, motivations, and goals.

One way to set yourself apart is by using examples of user journey mapping. It’s an easy way to prove you fully understand consumer behavior and how to design solutions that truly work. This tells hiring managers you did the upfront research to fully comprehend every step of the consumer experience.

2. Product Design and Prototyping

Hiring managers want to see experience in two main areas of product design — process design and interface design.

Your resume needs to show you’ve optimized processes and designed user-friendly experiences. Explain how you used consumer research and usability testing to improve product-user flows.

A hiring manager will then want to know if you can take these process improvements and implement your ideas using interface design. You can highlight interface design experience by mentioning times you created mockups, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs.

3. Product Testing

Hiring managers seek natural problem-solvers who take a data-driven approach to product design. Product testing and problem-solving is one area that is absolutely crucial to include on your resume.

Product testing experience shows you rely on data throughout the design process. Hiring managers want to know you’re constantly measuring product performance and seeking opportunities for improvement. Provide examples of when you used testing methods like A/B testing, tree testing, and beta testing.

4. Executing Product Launches

Successfully executing product launches tells hiring managers you’re capable of working with cross-functional teams to reach a common goal. Mention your experience working with development, research, and product management teams.

Hiring managers like to see concrete examples of your work, whether through prototypes or products that are currently live. Your portfolio can supplement your resume to reinforce your ability to launch user-friendly products.

Once you understand what hiring managers are looking for, you can start organizing the content of your resume.

Product Designer Resume Sections

Your resume will be organized into five main sections — contact information, resume summary, work experience, technical skills, and education.

Contact Information

Your contact information section should include personal details a hiring manager can use to set up an interview. There’s not much room for flexibility here — stick to the basics.

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of your resume is an external link to a portfolio. Your resume will go into detail about your professional experience and projects. It will also show your design in action with examples of wireframing, prototypes, and products that are currently live.

What to include:

• Name
• Job title
• City and state
• Email
• Phone number
• Portfolio

Example:

• Vincent Ngu | Senior UX Designer | Los Angeles, California
• Vngu@gmail.com | 888-431-2368 | Portfolio Link

Resume Summary

Your resume summary is the first section a hiring manager will look over. It will provide a brief explanation of who you are and why you’re the perfect fit for the product designer role.

Hiring managers spend only six seconds on average looking at resumes. Your resume summary needs to captivate hiring managers and encourage them to read more. It should include your years of experience, areas of specialty, and some examples of notable professional accomplishments.

We recommend writing your resume summary at the very end of the design process, once you’ve written about your professional experience. This way, your work experience details will be fresh in your mind.

Example:

• Senior product designer with eight years of experience creating products that solve user pain points while achieving business goals. Successfully conceptualized, prototyped, and launched four new products for Fortune 500 brands. Well-versed in Sketch, user interface design, and Agile development.

Work Experience

Once you’ve caught the attention of hiring managers, they’ll want to see some proof of your qualifications. Your work experience section will detail projects you worked on, responsibilities you held, and the technical tools and skills you used.

Your experience should incorporate different elements of the product design process — like prototyping, user testing, and implementation. Incorporate data points whenever possible to strengthen your experience and show you’re a results-oriented designer.

It’s a good practice to look through the job description and job requirements and incorporate relevant experience on your resume. You can then match your work experience to include what the hiring managers are looking for.

What to include:

• Job title
• Company
• Dates employed
• 3-4 bullet points highlighting your contributions

Example:

SaaS Company | Senior Product Designer | April 2018 – May 2020

• Leveraged remote user testing tools to uncover bottlenecks and design improvements throughout the development process
• Conducted customer journey mapping and redesigned user flows to increase user experience scores by 40% 
• Planned and prioritized product updates and improvements for a new web application

Technical Skills

Hiring managers need to know you have the required technical skill set to join their design team. You’ll need to be familiar with the relevant tools, processes, and technical skills their team uses.

Product design merges graphic design, web design, and project management into one role. Your technical skills should be diverse and cover all three of these areas.

Take another look at the job description to find the most important technical skills. Incorporate the most relevant skills, and leave out skills that are less impactful.

Example:

• Figma
• Sketch
• Middleman
• Adobe XD
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Photoshop
• Prototyping
• CSS
• Graphic design
• HTML
• Storyboarding
• Agile

Education

Extensive real-world experience will outweigh your educational background, but this section is still important. Your education shows you developed a foundational understanding of product design and design principles.

You can choose to incorporate relevant projects and extracurricular activities if you’re early on in your career and don’t have extensive real-world experience.

What to include:

• Name of institution
• Degree obtained
• Dates attended

Example:

• Colorado University | Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science | 2010 – 2014

Resume Formatting

Formatting your resume is the last step before you can apply to your dream job. This is an important step, as hiring managers will dismiss poorly designed resumes. Use some of your product design experience to implement basic design elements that make your resume template look professional and clean.

Here are some areas for consideration:

• Resume style: Use a reverse-chronological resume format. This format walks through your product design experience starting with your most recent job.
• Margins: Set your margins so that they’re large enough to print your resume but small enough to avoid making your resume overly long.
• Font: Don’t get too creative with your font choice. Pick something professional and modern.
• Font size: Consider readability when choosing your font size. Make sure your text is legible on a printed and digital version of your resume.
• Spacing: Set your line spacing to an appropriate level to avoid crowding your resume. Again, readability is key.
• White space: Your resume sections shouldn’t blend together. Use white space between sections to make your resume easily scannable.
• Color: You can incorporate color in your resume, but keep it simple. Stick to professional-looking colors, and avoid using any distracting colors.
• Resume length: Your resume can be one or two pages long. However, only write a two-page resume if you have extensive experience and are applying to a higher-level role.

Here are some product designer resume samples for you to visualize how your resume should look. Once you've finalized your resume, it's time to start applying to your dream job.

The Perfect Resume Prototype

A product designer resume needs to show you're a well-rounded designer who has the technical ability to successfully lead projects. It needs to highlight experiences from all steps of the design process — like researching, prototyping, testing, and launching.

Follow this guide, and hiring managers will beg you to join their team in no time. You can also speed up your design process and reduce headaches by using our resume builder tool.