Project Planner CV Example

If you write a project planner CV that's more professional and engaging, it will help you progress through the ATS screening stage. Ultimately, it will also give you the best chance to impress the hiring manager, which will boost your prospects of reaching the interview stage. Let’s break down the core components of a CV and examine how to build them effectively.

Main sections of a project planner CV

Your strategy for writing a project planner CV will depend heavily on your experience, your level of seniority and the requirements listed in the job description.

However, regardless of your seniority, a project planner CV needs to tell a cohesive story of your professional growth. In the following sections, we’ll dive into each part of the CV step-by-step, starting with your header and moving through to your professional achievements.

CV Header

At the top of your project planner CV, add a header that establishes the design language of the document. Include the necessary contact information: your full name, email address, phone number and location. It's not typically necessary to include your full address. If you have a LinkedIn profile, consider adding a URL to this in your header, to help the reader easily find more information on your career and credentials.

For UK applications, it's not usually advisable to include a personal photo or any other personal details, such as your age, gender, nationality or ethnicity. These can risk introducing bias to the decision-making process and are discouraged under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary or Objective

Underneath your contact information, write a brief CV summary or CV objective to introduce yourself and highlight a few key skills and qualities. This can help the employer to quickly form a first impression on your suitability for the project planner role. The CV objective provides an alternative to the standard CV summary. While the CV summary focuses on your skills and achievements through your work experience, a CV objective highlights your ambitions and plans for the future, including how the role fits with these. This makes it ideal for junior candidates.

In your summary or objective, write two or three sentences introducing your key skills, unique qualities and career achievements, making sure they match the key requirements listed in the job description.

An effective summary will include brief reference to one or two of your strongest skills, ensuring they reflect the skills listed in the job description. It's important to make your skills and qualities feel unique to you, and show how you've used them to positive effect in your career to date. Here's an example of an effective project planner CV summary, with evidence of your impact and neat, well-structured sentences:

Above is an example of a less effective CV summary, with some subtle, yet notable differences. There are several factors that could make your summary less engaging. These include using long, poorly-structured sentences, failing to add evidence of your impact, being too generic with the skills you mention and not adapting your CV summary to specifically respond to the job description.

Work Experience

A CV's work experience section is usually its most important element. Employers tend to value the work experience section, as it shows evidence of how you've put your relevant skills to good use in your career to date. Ensure you tailor your work experience section to reflect the job description and show you meet all the essential requirements. This means picking out skills and qualities as keywords and reflecting them back in your work experience bullet points, so employers can assess your likely fit for the role.

Create a list of all your most relevant roles, going back up to 10 or 15 years if necessary. Include your job title, the name of the employer, its location and the dates you worked there. Include bullet points that explain how you put your skills to good use in each previous role.

Standing out with your CV work experience section means using action verbs and measurable outcomes to show the impact you made. You'll want to outline a progression in your skills development, and list evidence of the value you added. Take a look at an example of a strong project planner CV work experience section below.

Above you'll find a less effective example of a project planner CV work experience section. A less-effective work experience section could focus too much on irrelevant or out-of-date roles, or include generic information about your responsibilities that fails to show the impact you made. It might lack tailoring to the job description or fail to provide evidence to support the claims made in the bullet points.

Education

Your education section is the chance to list your most recent and highest qualifications, and anything that's relevant or required for the role.

Project planner jobs tend to require a relevant university degree just to be eligible for the role, so you'll want to showcase this in your CV. If you have a BSc (Hons) in Project Management or another related degree that makes you an eligible candidate for the position, add it to your CV. You could also add other degrees or qualifications that highlight your key skills, like resource allocation experience or project scheduling expertise.

When adding your qualifications to your education section, choose the highest relevant qualifications, and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with your most recent. For each entry, include the name and level of the degree or certification, the institution, its location and your graduation date or dates of study. To emphasise your qualifications and achievements, you might wish to include one or two bullet points, which highlight things like specialist areas of study, projects, dissertations or society memberships.

If you have any specialist certifications or licences that are necessary for the role, or help you stand out above other candidates, you may wish to mention them here. When adding any special licences, it's a good idea to also reference their expiry or renewal dates, if applicable.

Key Skills

Your CV's skills section CV's skills section is a great place to showcase some of the key skills necessary for the role. Check the job description to understand which skills are most essential, and provide a combination of hard and soft skills, reserving space to include some unique qualities that can help you to stand out from the competition. For a project planner CV, you'll want to focus on the most relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, including time management and budget forecasting accuracy, to catch the reader's attention and show you're qualified for the project planner position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills and technical skills are the specialist skills required for completing the everyday duties of the role, such as the use of certain software or equipment, or specialist industry knowledge. You can develop these skills through study, training, on-the-job or through completing industry certifications. For project planner jobs, essential hard skills from your career-to-date might include resource allocation experience, and project scheduling expertise. Check the skills specified in the job description, and add four or five key hard skills to your CV that show employers you're capable of completing the key duties of the role.

The ideal hard skills section will feature the most essential hard skills from the job description, while closely reflecting your own best technical abilities. The closer your strongest skills are to matching the job description, the higher your chances of success.

Take a look below to see the type of skills that are commonly listed in a project planner CV hard skills section:

Soft Skills

Soft skills differ from hard skills because they tend to be more transferable and applicable to different roles. Soft skills are the personal strengths and qualities that define your style of working and determine how well you're likely to fit in with the team and wider organisation. Transferable skills are among the most in-demand skills for employers, with rapidly changing and evolving ways of working requiring ever-more flexible and adaptable employees. Soft skills are also highly valuable for junior and entry-level positions, where candidates aren't expected to have a wealth of relevant work experience and career achievements.

Just like the hard skills section, begin by reviewing the job description to learn the most desirable soft skills to include in your project planner CV. Only add soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Draft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills, combining the most essential skills from the job description with your strongest personal qualities.

Explore the examples below to identify soft skills commonly presented in a project planner CV.

Languages

If you speak any languages in addition to your mother tongue, you might want to include them in your project planner CV as a languages section. These can be valuable for your application, whether languages are specified as a requirement in the job description or not. Within this section, list the foreign languages you speak to a reasonable degree of competence, together with an indicator of your skill levels.

The ways to indicate your foreign language skills depend on the level of detail you want to provide. They include assigning a basic descriptive word, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You could adopt the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), as this provides standardised levels to describe your competence, as follows:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Certifications

Depending on the role and your qualifications, it might be necessary to include a certifications section. It can enhance your chances of success to show specific training and certifications. Not only do these prove you're qualified for the role, but they also indicate proactivity and a dedication to professional development. In addition, the certifications section can be a valuable addition to your project planner CV if you're applying for a role that cites certain certifications or licences as a necessity in the job description. These might include roles where the use of specialist software or equipment forms part of your everyday duties.

Here is a list of some key certifications and licences that can be particularly useful for project planner applications:

Additional Sections

Adding optional sections to the end of your project planner CV is a good way of showing you have the necessary skills for the job. Consider including a few optional sections to your CV if you think you need to provide extra information to prove your credentials. These sections can be particularly valuable if you lack relevant work experience, such as for entry-level roles, or if you're changing careers to a completely new field or specialism.

And if you'd like more tips on making your CV stand out, explore our career resources. They’re designed to help you showcase your strengths and boost your chances of landing the job.

Hobbies and Interests

Your hobbies and interests can be a useful way of showcasing additional skills that are relevant to the job description, but that you haven't been able to prove via your work experience. In addition, this section is the ideal way to show aspects of your personality that might not otherwise shine through in your CV, helping to offer a point of difference compared to other candidates. However, only mention hobbies and interests that are relevant to the role, and that help you prove skills that you haven't been able to show in your work experience or other CV sections.

Achievements

Including an achievements and awards section is an effective way of showing the reader the value you've added for employers in your career to date. Add any awards you've won or career milestones you've reached, so employers can easily see the impact you've made in your career to date.

Voluntary Work

Another alternative to showcasing your skills and experience through work experience is by adding a volunteering section. This can give you a valuable showcase of your skills, particularly if you're a junior candidate or career changer without much relevant work experience. In your volunteering section, use a similar structure to your work experience section.

Add your job title or a description of the volunteer role, the organisation name, its location and the dates you volunteered (start and end date). Under this, add bullet points to show the skills you used, and evidence of how they contributed to positive achievements for the organisation.

Most impactful action verbs for a project planner CV

Using strong action verbs in your work experience bullet points gives you the opportunity to show how you've applied skills to good effect in previous roles. Starting each bullet point with an action verb, such as 'delivered', 'collaborated' or 'developed' also allows you to show your key skills and qualities in a way that's easily identifiable for the reader. You'll also want to back up any action verbs you're using with quantifiable evidence that showcases the value you added for previous employers. Use the past tense for action verbs that describe previous roles, with the present tense for any current responsibilities and achievements.

Full example of project planner CV

Now you know how to create a project planner CV for maximum impact, take a look below at this full, completed example:

To see how your CV might look after finalising its design and layout, take a look at our CV examples.

Guide to making your CV ATS compatible

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are now commonly used by employers, to help them manage the recruitment process. One of the main functions of ATS software is the scanning and ranking of CVs according to their likely suitability for the role. By taking on this task, the hiring manager can reduce the time and resources they spend on the initial selection process, making recruitment more efficient and cost-effective.

The growing prevalence of ATS apps requires a shift in approach by jobseekers, to prepare a CV with the best chance of passing the ATS screening stage. That's why we've put together a list of key ATS CV tips, to maximise your chances of success:

• Include keywords and phrases that mirror the job description to maximise your chances of ranking highly in the ATS screening stage.
• Use standard CV headings that clearly identify each section, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a standard CV layout, avoiding special design elements such as text boxes, columns or unlabelled graphics that can confound ATS scanning apps.
• Select a font that's widely used and maximises readability, including popular serif and sans serif fonts between size 10 and 12 for body text, and 14 and 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points throughout your CV in place of full sentences. This serves a few purposes, reducing the overall length, helping keywords stand out and making it overall more scannable by ATS apps.

It might seem like there's a lot to remember when it comes to making an ATS-compatible CV, but taking care with this stage can really improve your chances of success. To make the process as easy as possible, use one of our expert-designed, ATS-optimised CV templates and boost your chances of success.

Key takeaways for an impactful project planner CV

To grab the attention of the reader with your CV, tailor it to the exact specifications of the job description, incorporating keywords and phrases that match the employer's requirements. Select a suitable CV format that reflects your experience level, and focus on highlighting your key skills, and demonstrating how you've put them to good use to achieve positive outcomes in your career to date.

Finally, creating your CV using one of Jobseeker's expert-designed CV templates can give your application the edge, placing you among the leading candidates and positioning you for success with your job applications.

Sources:

1. Barnet Council (UK local government), Recruitment tips: How to write a supporting statement
2. Jobseeker, HR Trends