Scrum Master Resume Tips to get you to the interview and beyond.
When applying to scrum master roles, it won’t suffice to send a generic resume. HR representatives and look through hundreds of resumes every day, and only the best ones will get a second glance.
In fact, your resume may not even be seen by a real human; nowadays, more and more companies are using Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to automate the recruiting process. This means that your resume needs to be optimized so it can stand out amongst all the others.
Luckily, we have the experience and tools to help you strategically create a resume that will land you multiple scrum master interviews.
A winning scrum master resume:
✓ Emphasizes Agile Mindset
Have a conversation with someone in an agile coaching role, read some articles, watch some videos and get a good understanding of what it means to have an agile mindset.
The place where you can best make the case for embodying an agile mindset is in your professional summary. In your summary, describe attributes that reflect your embodiment of agile principles, or that you value:
- Individuals and interactions over Processes and tools
- Working software over Comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over Contract negotiation
- Responding to change over Following a plan
This means listing abilities such as the ability to cultivate relationships, communicate effectively, and solve problems.
✓ Describes Agile Responsibilities
If you’re just starting out on your scrum master journey, you may feel like you don’t have any relevant experience to put on your resume.
From our experience helping Scrum students in their job hunt, we can say that that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You don’t need Scrum or even software development experience to land a scrum master job. Instead, highlight any work experiences you’ve had where you applied Agile principles. This could be any experience where you:
- Ø Facilitated meetings
- Ø Facilitated processes
- Ø Removed impediments
- Ø Used effective communication to achieve a goal
- Ø Coordinated amongst internal or external stakeholders
- Ø Planned or executed a project
Emphasizing these experiences shows employers that you’re adept at taking on scrum master responsibilities and helping teams work at their best capacity.
✓ Is Two to Three Pages Long
You may have heard that the recommended resume length is one page, tops. However, we advise our students to make their resume two-three pages in length.
Research backs us up; the resume-writing service ResumeGo conducted a study in which they presented 20,000 one- and two-page resumes to a pool of 482 recruiters, HR professionals, and C-suite executives. They found that out of the 7,712 resumes that were approved, 70% of them were two pages long. They also found that the participants spent significantly more time reading longer resumes compared to shorter ones.
Because of these findings, we recommend a resume that’s at least two-three pages in length.
Don’t take this to mean that you should fill your resume with fluff just to meet this length requirement; rather, this extended page length will give you enough room to descriptively express the experience and skills you have that make you an exceptional fit for a scrum master role.
If you feel that your resume is looking thin, then a way to make it look more comprehensive is to elaborate on your Core Skill Sets, rather than just bullet points. The sample resume below shows samples of how each type of Core Skill Set section would look.
✓ Includes Optimized Keywords
It’s common practice for companies to pre-screen resumes through an ATS - especially at large companies. This software is programmed to weed out resumes that don’t include the targeted keywords that they’re looking for.
To make sure you get a high score from the ATS, add the right scrum master-related keywords throughout your resume.
Examples recommended keywords include:
- ØAgile
- ØScrum
- ØKanban
- ØProject management
- ØSprint planning
- ØRetrospectives
✓ Lists Agile Certifications
Becoming certified through an accredited Agile organization shows employers that you have tactical knowledge that you can use in a scrum master role. The main Agile certification providers are ICAgile, Scrum.org, and Scrum Alliance.
Don’t hesitate to list any other related certifications on your resume. This could include SAFe or Certified Product Owner certifications.
On the next pages, we’ve provided a sample scrum master resume that hits on all of the critical elements that we’ve mentioned.
Sample Scrum Master Resume
Annie Agile | 555.222.2019 | annieagile@theagilecoach.com
PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY
Experienced servant leader with a proven track record of devising and implementing strategic teamwork solutions that foster communication and collaboration. Accomplished at introducing and facilitating the adoption of Scrum principles, removing impediments and fostering self-organization. Results-oriented, decisive leader with proven success in establishing and cultivating relationships to build team focus and flexibility. Excellent communicator and innovative problem solver with strong strategic development and organizing capabilities.
CORE SKILL SET
•Core Skills: Business Analysis, Team Facilitation, Scrum and waterfall methodologies
•Exceptional skills in gathering, analyzing, and translating business requirements into functional specs that were used to design and implement business solutions.
•Proficient in facilitating Scrum ceremonies (Daily scrum, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Sprint retrospectives) and leading agile projects.
•Delivered team and organization training materials and workshops, building knowledge and skills to facilitate the agile transformation.
•Coached teams on Agile values and principles to promote continuous improvement, accountability, and transparency in practices and artifacts.
•Servant leader and liaison to upper management.
EXPERIENCE
ABC LLC
Team Facilitator / Scrum Master 5/20XX to Present
- Helped team members, stakeholders and customers understand the agile values, principles and practices.
- Organized and facilitated sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, reviews, retrospectives, release planning, demos and other Scrum-related meetings
- Empowered teams to self-organize and grow cross-functionality
- Worked closely with product owner in backlog management and continuous delivery of features
- Educated and reinforced scrum methodology and agile framework to team members and key stakeholders.
- Modeled core Agile principles of collaboration, prioritization, team accountability and visibility; ensured consistent application of scrum methodologies across the enterprise
- Protected development team from outside distractions, impediments or team conflicts, and maintain focus on product backlog and project timeline.
- Empowered Development Team to remove impediments to deliver continuous value for shareholders
XYZ Inc.
Business Analyst 06/2017 to 4/2018
- Communicated with external Stakeholders to gather requirements on directing client interaction to increase communication and accuracy with processes, transactions, and file requests.
- Facilitated meetings with both internal and external stakeholders to gather requirements for stories.
- Created and implemented engaging activities that lead to increased activity, results, and improved employee morality.
- Provided accurate and clear Acceptance Criteria to Dev Teams for DoD (Definition of Done) resulting in more stories being accepted after demos.
- Led user story analysis session to create and elaborated user stories, technical stories, user journeys on JIRA.
If you have any question, don't hesitate to reach out to me at pabitra@agileacademy.io
