Finance Manager Resume Examples in 2023

Finance Manager Resume Examples

Years of Experience

Tips for Writing a Better Finance Manager Resume

Your resume has one purpose: to get you interviews for jobs you want. You can ensure your resume serves that purpose by focusing on your most relevant skills and displaying them as clearly as possible. The tips below will help you give your resume the focus and clarity it needs to move your job search forward.

Capture your relevant finance background

To write a great finance manager resume, you’ll need to first take the full measure of your relevant background. Follow these three steps:

Step 1: For each job in your work history, brainstorm and write down your answer to the question: What are you most proud of about this experience? Write down memories as they occur to you, and don’t worry yet whether the details are relevant or well-organized. Resist the urge to complete this step in any structured or linear way. The point here is just to generate plenty of positive information you can then review more critically.

Step 2: Now with everything in front of you, go through and remove any details that don’t speak to your target job. Evaluate each detail one by one, always answering the same key question: Does this overlap with the duties you’d like to have in your next finance manager job? When in doubt, delete (or at least move the detail to another document so it’s out of your current writing process).

Step 3: Organize and format your remaining details as the basis for your resume.

The order of these steps is important. Don’t start reviewing and removing details until you’ve brainstormed plenty about your positive work experiences. And don’t start organizing details until you’re done removing the irrelevant ones. Otherwise, you’ll probably waste time polishing up work details that you just delete later on. For a more detailed overview of this method, see the “How to write a successful resume” section of our Resume vs. Curriculum Vitae (CV) article.

Streamline how you show multiple credentials

When citing a college degree, certification, or other credentials, it’s best to list the information in this order:

Degree or Credential Name, Issuing School or Organization, City, ST

But what if you have multiple degrees from the same college or multiple training courses from the same program? Following the above format causes you to list the same organization and location info multiple times, as in:

Master’s Degree in Finance, University of Cincinnati, OH | 2015
Bachelor’s Degree in Legal Studies, University of Cincinnati, OH | 2013

The effect can become tedious and distracting to the hiring manager, especially in cases where you completed many courses at the same training program.

There’s a better way. List the organization and location info first, once. Then indent the multiple items underneath, so the reader sees they came from the same place:

University of Cincinnati, OH

• Master’s Degree in Finance | 2015
• Bachelor’s Degree in Legal Studies | 2013

Keep a clean, simple format

For finance professionals, a conservative resume format is usually best. Use color sparingly, if at all. Try using a traditional serif font like Century or Cambria for your body text and a clean sans serif font like Calibri for your subject headings. Avoid fancier Microsoft Word format options like WordArt, Tables, and Text Boxes (which can muck up ATS anyway).

This conservative approach is well-suited to your field, but it’s also often the best way to display your career information. As Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Common Key Skills for Finance Manager Resumes

You can boost your resume by giving extra attention to keywords.

That’s because companies looking to fill a position often use an applicant tracking system (ATS). This computer system scans each submitted resume for keywords relevant to the job at hand. When the ATS scans a resume with many relevant keywords, it’s prone to flag the document for the hiring manager.

To make your resume ATS-friendly, add a keyword-rich “Skills” or “Expertise” section to your resume (as in the examples above). Below are common keywords for finance managers:

Common Action Verbs for Finance Manager Resumes

One of the most common resume mistakes is using too few verbs. When you repeat the same generic verb (say, “Manage”) several times, it distracts the reader and fails to show the dynamic nature of your work. The following list will help you mix up the verbs on your finance manager resume:

How to Align Your Resume With a Job Posting

For each job in your Experience section, consider adding a company description. You can place this description in brackets right next to or below the company name. It also helps to match formatting. For instance, if you’ve italicized the company name, italicize the company description too.

Company descriptions let you show any similarities between your past and desired employers. For instance, maybe you’ve worked for companies of a similar size or in the same industry. Or perhaps you’ve worked at organizations with a similar core mission or leadership philosophy. By working these details into your descriptions, you can make your resume more relevant to the job at hand.