How to write a resume for a financial specialist position

Financial analysts, accountants and financial managers analyze business data, create financial plans, reports and help businesses make data-driven decisions. These specialists are valued for their analytical skills, ability to work with numbers and evaluate expenses.

If you are a finance professional looking for new opportunities, remember that a recruiter spends less than a minute reviewing each resume. Therefore, you need to present your skillset, accomplishments and credentials to get the potential employer interested. Today, we will explain how to build an attention-grabbing resume that brings results.

Are you too busy to build a resume on your own? Many finance and banking professionals prefer paying a finance resume writer to save time and get an effective resume. Professional CV writers help present your accomplishments and skills to portray you as a perfect fit for the open role. An expert will add the needed keywords and use an effective formatting to help you pass the ATS. Moreover, resume writing services today are affordable even for students.

9 tips to create a strong finance resume

Use a reverse chronological format

Most employers prefer receiving a chronological resume because it allows them to evaluate the candidate’s career progression, job titles, and duration of each job. List jobs starting from your current one, and specify dates and responsibilities for each role. Do not use a functional resume unless you are making a transition to finance from some other industry.

Keep it brief

An ideal resume length is up to 2 pages (students and graduates can submit a one-page document). Be sure to provide information succinctly and cut off the secondary details. Include no more than 6-7 bullets for each role. Remember that it isn’t necessary to list every job you’ve had in your life, so feel free to remove early or irrelevant roles. Hiring managers don’t like receiving multi-page resumes, so most likely they will simply toss such a resume.

Demonstrate specific accomplishments

It is essential for a finance professional to demonstrate measurable results of their work. Finance specialists working in the same industry can perform similar job duties, so it’s the accomplishments that differentiate you from other applicants. Examples of accomplishments are implementing data management systems and procedures, managing multiple projects, reducing costs, training new hires, or building effective client relationships.

List skills essential for finance specialists

Listing specific finance skills is important for two reasons. Firstly, the hiring manager can evaluate your key competencies in a glance without reading the document from top to bottom. And secondly, your skills can work as keywords and help you pass the ATS screening. You can copy the exact skills from the job posting, or use these popular keywords for finance specialists:

• Budget management
• Strategic planning
• Finance management
• Asset management
• Accounting standards
• Risk management
• SAP
• Tax planning
• Mergers and acquisitions
• A/P and A/R, and more.

Include relevant certifications

Some companies are only willing to hire certified finance professionals. If you hold one or several certifications in the finance industry, be sure to put them near the top of the resume so that the hiring manager could see them. Examples of financial certifications that you can include are:

• Certified financial planner (CFP)
• Certified public accountant (CPA)
• Certified investment management analyst (CIMA), and others.

Adapt it to a job posting

Generic resumes are not effective these days since most large and mid-sized companies use ATS to weed out the irrelevant applications. Your resume has to be tailored to a specific vacancy to be considered by a human hiring manager. The simplest way to optimize your resume is to copy names of skills, credentials and competencies from a job posting and insert them naturally as you describe your job duties and skills.

Check for mistakes and typos

59% of hiring managers will reject a resume with typos or poor grammar. This is particularly important for finance and accounting specialists who are expected to be attentive to detail. Use an online spell checking software – it will help you detect minor issues such as typos, poor grammar, and punctuation. After that, read the resume line by line to make sure that each sentence makes sense and is informative for a hiring manager.

Ask for advice

Writing a resume can be confusing because, unless you work with resumes daily, you might not be aware of how employers scan resumes or what matters to them in the first place. Using the tips above, you can significantly strengthen your resume. However, if you’re not sure what to include or how to structure the document in general, don’t hesitate to talk to a resume consultant.