Seven Seconds in Heaven
Writing your Scrum Master Resumé
Reading time: 6 minutes
Recruiters spend an average of seven seconds looking at your resumé before deciding if you’re worth talking to.
SEVEN SECONDS!
Either you’re just using the same resumé you use for everything, and they’re tossing you straight in the trash, or you’re customizing the resumé for the position you’re seeking, and they’re interested immediately.
I can think of no other place that a first impression is more important. You’re not even there to wave your hands and jump up and down in front of them, so the resumé itself has to get their attention.
Here’s how you do it.
Tell the truth.
First off (and it pains me that I have to say this so often), don’t lie!
Don’t add jobs to your resumé that you didn’t have.
Don’t make up fake job titles for positions you didn’t hold.
Don’t say you did things or achieved things that you did not.
Doing this might seem like it will open doors for you, but it doesn’t. It slams them shut and locks them.
Be clear about your intentions.
Right at the top of your resumé, beneath your name (or for your headline, if you’re applying this to your LinkedIn profile), write “Scrum Master.”
Yes, you write “Scrum Master” there even if you’ve never worked as a Scrum Master before. It’s ok, this is not dishonest - this space on your resumé is not for indicating the work you have already done, but rather the work you’re seeking to do.
Tell your story.
Everyone has an About Me section somewhere on their resumé where they are supposed to introduce themselves in a freeform way.
Do not use this space to say the same things that you’re going to say in your Experience section. Instead, talk about who you are as a person and why the work you [want to] do is important to you.
Don’t do this:
Dedicated self-starter with a background in financial analysis. Managed $11M in budget across nine departments. Seeking to transition into a Scrum Master role.
Instead, do this:
I’ve always driven myself to meet my goals. Since I’ve always been interested in business, I’ve worked with the numbers as a Financial Analyst for over five years. Now I’m finding myself attracted to the way people work on teams within the business, and I’ve started down the path toward working as a Scrum Master.
Paint your picture.
If you want to become a Scrum Master, then you either:
have some transferrable skills from other work you’ve done, or
you don’t really understand what a Scrum Master does.
In this article, I can really only help you if you’re the first bullet point.
In your Experience section, you’ll need to make it really obvious that you have those transferrable skills. Here’s how.
For each job you’ve done, make a list of bullet points, each one being something you did at that job. It doesn’t matter how big or small, how important or unimportant that task was. Try to write down as many points as you can think of. Call this your “Master Resumé” - it’s an exhaustive list of all the things you have done.
For each bullet point, you’ll now need to consider if you can honestly rephrase it in a way that makes very clear it’s a transferrable skill. I’ve identified this list of Scrum Master keywords - try to rewrite every line using one of these keywords.
Scrum Master Skills: Lead, Teach, Mentor, Coach, Facilitate
Scrum Master Qualities: Empathy, Teamwork, Encouragement
Scrum Values: Focus, Respect, Openness, Courage, Commitment
Pillar of Empiricism: Transparent, Adapt, Inspect
You won’t have been able to rewrite every line to use one of these keywords, because not everything you have ever done is applicable to the Scrum Master role. That’s ok! Just take all the lines that you could rewrite, and add them to your new resumé.
If you have more lines than will reasonably fit in your resumé, prioritize them from most to least valuable, and just use the best ones.
If you find yourself with gaps between jobs after cherry-picking the most applicable skills, it’s probably fine. But if you’re concerned about it, you can always change this:
Experience
Job D (2022 - Present)
Did a thing
Did another thing
Job B (2020-2021)
Did a thing
to this:
Skills & Accomplishments
Did a thing
Did another thing
Did a third thing
Experience
Job D (2022 - Present)
Job C (2021-2022)
Job B (2020-2021)
Job A (2019-2020)
Remember, the most important thing here is that no matter where the recruiter’s eyes fall on your resumé, they need to see something that makes it perfectly clear you have the skills needed to do the job.
When to put “Scrum Master” in your Experience
I want to be clear about when you can and cannot say you were a Scrum Master in the experience section of your resumé. There are ONLY two times this is acceptable.
You were hired, transferred to, or for some other reason explicitly given the title “Scrum Master” by your employer.
You were in another position, but fulfilled the Scrum Master accountability for your Scrum Team. This requires a few things to be true:
Your team was explicitly using Scrum.
You specifically filled the Scrum Master role on your team.
Your teammates would agree that you filled that role.
In any case besides these two situations, you were probably not the Scrum Master, and that’s an important distinction to make for your own protection.
If your Experience indicates that you have tons of transferrable skills, and your About section talks about how Agility is important to you, and you list your CSM or PSM-1 certification on your resumé, then when you get in an interview, the questions will be about Scrum theory and will allow you to muse on what you think is important or how you might try to handle a proposed situation.
But if your Experience indicates that you’ve previously served as a Scrum Master for a team, then the questions will be very different. They’ll ask for specific instances of things that happened on your team (that happen to most teams). You’ll be expected to talk about what you’ve already done as a Scrum Master, not what you plan to do.
Make it easy on them to make it easy on yourself.
Making these kinds of updates to your resumé will draw a clear presentation of who you are and why organizations should consider hiring you. They’ll need less than seven seconds to understand you’re worth a follow-up. And they’ll ensure you’re asked the correct types of questions when you get to interviews.
Not every Scrum Master position is going to be available to you as a new or aspiring Scrum Master. If your resumé is well-written, you won’t have to worry about figuring out which ones are which. You can simply give them a good look at who you are and let them decide on their own.
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