everyone says quantify everything. but what if you genuinely don't have numbers? i was an APM at a startup. we didn't track things cleanly. i shipped features, i ran standups, i talked to users. there are no before/after conversion numbers i can point to.
my current bullets: Led cross-functional team to ship [feature name] Conducted user interviews to inform product roadmap Collaborated with engineering and design on sprint planning
these are all real things i did. they're also completely generic. anyone at any company could write these.
how do people solve this? do i just estimate? make up a number and caveat it? leave it as is and hope the interview is where i show substance?
5 replies
pm_priya
you don't need revenue numbers. you need any number. "conducted 24 user interviews across 3 customer segments" is a real number and it's yours. how many standups did you run per week, how many weeks? how many features shipped per quarter? how big was the cross-functional team?
the point isn't that the number is impressive, it's that it's specific. specificity signals you actually did the thing.
apm_aisha
ok this reframe helps. i was so focused on impact numbers i forgot scale numbers exist. i can count things.
numbers_only
here's my actual framework for this, because i've coached a bunch of people through it: volume metrics: how many? how often? how large? time metrics: how long did it take? what did you shorten? scope metrics: how many stakeholders, teams, SKUs, users? outcome proxies: shipped on time? under budget? zero rollbacks?
you almost always have at least one of these if you think hard enough. if you truly can't find anything, that's a signal the bullet doesn't belong on the resume.
hardware_hugo
counterpoint: i've seen people torture their bullets to fit a number and it reads worse than a clean verb-phrase. "Conducted 24 user interviews" is good. "Conducted approximately 20-25 user interviews yielding insights that contributed to roadmap prioritization" is bad. don't let the hunt for numbers make you add filler words.
apm_aisha
lol yes that second version is basically what i wrote in my first draft. noted.