Scrum Master Resume

Whether you are an experienced scrum master or looking to move up in your career, you should approach your next job hunt with a professional resume to best position yourself to employers.

This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about the scrum master resume writing process.

And if you want to download the full scrum master resume template in this guide, you can purchase it here.

About Scrum Master Resumes

As a successful and experienced scrum master, you know you bring tremendous value to organizations and that you have many achievements that set you apart from your competitors. You also know your strengths and can speak to them, but you may have difficulty in creating a resume. It takes great skill to express your knowledge, experience, accomplishments, and credentials in a concise, organized, and compelling way. You probably have a goal about what your next career move should be but are uncertain how to best approach potential companies to get there.

Before you write anything or create a strategy for your job search, you want to take an objective look at your career to create your brand narrative. Think about how you got to where you are today and what accomplishments make you stand out among competitors. Consider the qualities and attributes you have that make you an asset.

Once you have a deeper understanding of this, you can start searching for job descriptions you are interested in applying for. This will give you insight into what companies across your industry are seeking. If you are looking to create a new career path in a different industry, you should study these job descriptions to identify your transferable skills.

As a scrum master, you may have years of IT-related experience that have prepared you for your current goal. When crafting your resume, you want to highlight the skills you learned and utilized in earlier roles that have helped you progress to where you are today. If you haven’t been a scrum master yet, it’s important to highlight project management, leadership, and technical acumen throughout the document so potential employers know you have the abilities needed to succeed as a scrum master.

The next step is to write a compelling, concise resume that makes you stand out from other scrum masters. Your resume should follow resume writing guidelines regarding length, language, and information to include.

Our team at PRW has the expertise needed to craft your brand story in a way that appeals to readers while meeting resume writing and formatting guidelines. We discuss these requirements throughout the guide, but you may decide to take advantage of our professional resume writing service. This not only saves you time but also helps you get the best resume for your job search.

Interested in learning more? 

Your Scrum Master Resume in Context

Preparing a resume and searching for a new job is a lengthy and often overwhelming experience for professionals of all levels. Technologies, workforces, and job searching techniques are constantly changing, making it difficult for many job seekers to keep up with current best practices. You must take a tactical approach to ensure your resume aligns with resume writing strategies and industry guidelines.

Many employers use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to screen incoming resumes. It’s important to study the job descriptions you are interested in and utilize the appropriate keywords to pass these scans. Once you have a clear understanding of what the industry and potential employers are looking for, you can decide the best way to present your professional experience. When you write your resume, it’s vital you remember that you are writing the content for others and need to keep their outside perspective in mind.

You want to communicate:

• Major achievements and how you did them
• Clear career progression
• Your credentials
• Your key skills and attributes

Your resume should be clean, error-free, and concise. Here are a few best practices you should remember when crafting your document:

• You should have a clean and consistent format throughout the document (font, font sizes, spacing, margins, etc.).
• Your value needs to be clear within the first few lines of the document. The first bullet of the resume needs to be direct and to the point about who you are and what your expertise is.
• Notable accomplishments should be highlighted in bullets under each role with a general overview of what was achieved. If you have quantifiable data to back this up, please use it. It sometimes gets overwhelming trying to determine which accomplishments to highlight, so when considering these bullets, ask yourself “Does this make me stand out among competitors?” If the answer is yes, you have an accomplishment!
• Proofread the document to ensure there are no errors in the format, spelling, or grammar. Professional resumes omit pronouns and articles (a, an, the) so it’s important you follow this rule.
• Most resumes shouldn’t be longer than 2-pages and have less than 1,000 words.
• You should always assume the person who will read your resume is not a scrum master. Translate technical jargon so that the general population understands what you are saying. You should spell out acronyms on the first appearance.

As a scrum master, you know you have unique qualities and capabilities that may not be relevant to other industries. This is what sets you apart, so it should be highlighted! Scrum masters often have certifications and technical proficiencies that are not shown for other types of job roles. While an exhaustive list of technical proficiencies is not necessary, it is important you review the job descriptions you are applying for and showcase those specific technologies throughout your resume. Additionally, your resume should show that you can manage projects, deliver improvements, and collaborate cross-functionally.

Presenting Your Experience & Qualifications

As a scrum master, you may be tempted to create a complicated format with design elements. There are many templates available on software programs and the internet, but those formats are not optimized for ATS nor are they ideal for many professionals. Less is more when it comes to your resume. You don’t want to stand out to recruiters for the wrong reasons.

Most hiring managers give a resume a few seconds of review before deciding if they will continue reading. This means accomplishments and skills should be easy to find and stand out on the page. Design-heavy formats take away from the most important part of the resume: your experience. You should create a resume with an organized and efficient format that clearly outlines your career progression and achievements.

White space is your friend when writing a resume. You want to consider how the person reading your resume will view it, so strategically using white space to help with the overall aesthetics of your document is recommended.

When crafting your format, you should have clearly defined sections. Each section should have a title that states what information can be found. The resume should have bold job titles, easy-to-read fonts, concise language and job descriptions, and bulleted accomplishments that make you stand out.

Your resume should not have photographs, graphics, hobbies, or any other information that is not relevant to your career goals.

In the following sections, we’ll discuss the sections your resume should have and what information to include.

Your Contact Information

An employer cannot contact you if you don’t have current and accurate contact information on your resume. This information should be presented at the very top of the resume and easy to read, as in the example below:

Contact information best practices include:

• Only list the city and state
• Select only one email address that you use regularly
• List your LinkedIn profile URL so recruiters can get a stronger sense of who you are
• Include a phone number that you use regularly

Your Job Title and Summary

When you write your new scrum master resume, you must remember you are writing it for your next job, not the one you currently have. The title at the top of the page should reflect the job you are applying for, not your current position. You may need to change this for each role you send an application out to if it varies. ATS software scans for the exact title and will rank your resume lower without it.

Since hiring managers spend so little time initially reviewing the resume, your first sentences must be impactful. Once you have the title listed, you should list your unique value proposition (UVP), also known as the elevator pitch. This should convey who you are and what your expertise is in.

An Example UVP for a Scrum Master: 

Dedicated and ambitious scrum master with deep experience in technology life cycle management, project delivery, and business management.

Now, using the UVP as the start of the paragraph, you should craft an executive summary. It should be 3-5 sentences that show your key attributes and successes. It’s important to remember that this section should align with the role you want to apply for. You want to communicate to potential employers your skills, value, and accomplishments so they know you can support their strategic vision and growth initiatives.

An Example Professional Summary for a Scrum Master May Look Like the Following:

Dedicated and ambitious scrum master with deep experience in technology life cycle management, project delivery, and business management. Apply executive leadership skills in customer-facing roles to meet tight deadlines and customer goals. Problem-solver with strong oral and written communication skills, able to collaboratively work across departments to deliver digital projects. Proven prioritization, coordination, and facilitation skills. Demonstrate exceptional abilities in marketing, business analysis, product management, requirements gathering, and value stream mapping.

Reviewing the job description you are applying for is recommended before you craft the executive summary. This will help you understand the skills and language the company used so your document can mirror it. This section should include both hard and soft skills that show your abilities and attributes.

You want to avoid flashy or overly wordy language. This can be distracting and make it hard for the reader to follow. You should also use industry-specific keywords when you can. This shows your expertise and helps target your ideal role.

Scrum Master Keywords

It is important you understand industry-related scrum master keywords and use them throughout the resume, including the summary at the top of your resume. Did you know that even the most qualified candidates will be rejected from ATS software if the appropriate keywords are not included? Analyzing the job description and using the same keywords and phrases will ensure you are not disqualified.

Scrum masters are expected to have specific skills, career milestones, and attributes. In the following table, you’ll find a small collection of hard and soft skills that are common for scrum masters. This list is not exhaustive and doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be reviewing job descriptions for specific keywords.

Hard skills:

• Agile
• Waterfall
• Kanban
• Project management
• Continuous improvement
• Resource allocation
• Software development
• Emerging technology management
• Mobile application management
• Digital platform management
• Planning
• Mentoring
• Automated testing

Soft skills:

• Written communication skills
• Leadership
• Collaboration
• Facilitation
• Innovation
• Conflict resolution
• Decision-making
• Problem-solving

Areas of Expertise (Skills and Competencies for a Scrum Master) 

Directly below the executive summary are the areas of expertise. This section of the resume highlights 6-12 specific skills in a bulleted format. This section should use words that are not already listed in the summary and should match the skills listed in the job description. The ATS software screens for those specific skills, so you should write them verbatim. For example, if the job description says team leadership, you would not put team management. You need to put team leadership to ensure it is recorded as a skill you possess.

Some scrum masters choose to put a selected accomplishments section below the areas of expertise. This is a short list of notable accomplishments, approximately 3-4 bullets. If you choose to do this, do not repeat these same achievements later in the resume.

For example, these could be listed in the selected accomplishments section for a scrum master:

• Improved production performance by 50% while reducing error rates with new product features and enhanced capabilities in 2020.  
• Participated as lead scrum master during project to identify dependencies; assessed results and set goals to remove impediments, updated stakeholders, and streamlined processes in 2018.  
• Delivered over 1,000 releases in 2017 in collaboration with project and departmental teams. 

Professional Experience

The professional experience section is the most important one. This is where you show your career progression and accomplishments. Recruiters are interested in the past 10-15 years of experience, so do not list any roles beyond that. This also protects you against ageism. Your roles should be listed in reverse chronological order.

When you craft each position, you should list the following:

• The company’s name
• The location
• Years of employment (including months is not recommended)
• Your specific job title
• A brief description of key job duties
• 3-8 bulleted achievements with data if possible

When writing your accomplishments, we recommend you use the C-A-R method. This means listing the challenge, showing the action you took, and the results that happened. It’s impossible to list quantifiable data for each achievement, but you should try to list something if at all possible.

A repetitive resume is a boring resume that will get tossed aside. To avoid this, you don’t want to list achievements or skills more than once. The goal of the resume is to get a company to call you for an interview, so you want to show only the most impressive and relevant information. You have limited space to tell your story, so use compelling and active language to showcase your contributions.

Do not use common phrases, such as responsible for, provided, or handled. These phrases don’t actually communicate what you achieved and can be must more impactful with an action verb.

Additionally, the tenses of your verbs are important. If you have a current role, it should be in present tense. For all accomplishments and previous roles, the verbs should be in past tense.

Some professionals want to list experience beyond the recommended 10-15 years. This is acceptable if you put it in an “additional experience” section without dates. You should only list the company name, title, and location.

Education & Professional Development

Your credentials should be in the section after your experience. This includes education and some licenses or certifications. For this section, you list the degree or certification and what university or institution issued it to you. Dates and GPAs are not listed in this section. You should list them in order of significance, like below:

Additional Information

Some professionals want to include additional information if there is room left. That information can be any of the following:

• Awards
• Professional Affiliations
• Publications
• Languages (if relevant to the desired position)
• Volunteer/Community Service

As a scrum master, you will have knowledge of various methodologies and technologies. You can also include these in the additional experience section. Many IT professionals break down technologies like the following:

• Programming Languages
• Methodologies
• Tools
• Software
• Processes
• Hardware
• Systems

Which technology you list in your resume will depend on the job descriptions you are applying for.

You should only list relevant information on the resume. The additional information section doesn’t need detail or any other information included.

Your Finished Scrum Master Resume

Once you have created your scrum master resume, it’s time to review it thoroughly. You should consider what it conveys from a holistic and aesthetic viewpoint. When you read the document, think about how it looks from an outsider’s perspective. And ask yourself these questions:

• Would I understand who I am and what I do if I didn’t know myself?
• Would I want to call myself for an interview?
• Did I start each sentence with an action verb? Is the resume impactful?
• Are the sentences too wordy or too long?
• Are there any errors in the format, grammar, or spelling?

We recommend you ask someone in your field and someone not in your field to also review the document. Does the non-scrum master understand what you do? Did you forget anything important to a scrum master role? This step is important so you are not disqualified over a simple and fixable mistake.

Next Steps & Our Services

See Resume Writing Packages

We hope this guide gave you some perspective on how complex writing a keyword-optimized, compelling, and concise scrum master resume can be. The nuances of the resume writing industry can be overwhelming and many professionals like yourself purchase professional resume writing services. These services help you craft a resume that is results-focused while targeting your dream job. A well-written resume can be the difference between a call back or no contact.

At Professional Resume Writers, we offer full-service career advancement services. We exclusively help professionals like you by utilizing our decades of experience to help you get hired faster with higher salaries. Our experts will help you identify your unique brand and then translate that into a resume that will make you confident in your job search.

Buy the Scrum Master Resume Template

We encourage you to learn more about the packages available to advance your career. However, we understand these services are not always feasible for professionals. So, we also have a link to our scrum master template if you’d like to download it.