Finance Resume Examples and Templates for 2023

Finance Resume Examples

Years of Experience

Tips for Writing a Better Finance 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 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? Don’t worry yet whether the details you’re jotting down are relevant or well-organized. The point here is just to generate plenty of positive information you can then curate.
• Step 2: Now with everything in front of you, go through and remove any details that don’t speak to your target job. Review 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 job? When in doubt, move the detail to a separate document so it’s no longer part of your current writing process.
• Step 3: Organize and format your remaining details as the basis for your finance 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.

Avoid non-finance jargon

Any time you use a long word when a short word would do, that’s jargon. A classic example: People use the words “utilize” or “utilization” when they should use “use”.

Jargon can be especially tempting in the finance and accounting fields, where plenty of specialized terms (like “amortization”) don’t actually have a shorter option. These terms have a place on your resume, as long as they’re relevant to your goals. The problem is when you let words that should be short and simple become words (often ending in “-tion” or “-ment”) that are long and clunky.

Companies and other authorities use jargon all the time to soften the blow of bad news. For instance, General Motors once described a plant shutdown as a “volume-related production-schedule adjustment”. (You’ll find this and many other examples of corporate jargon in William Zinsser’s classic book “On Writing Well”.)

Take the opposite approach on your resume. Your goal with this document isn’t to conceal bad news, but rather to shed light on the good news of your candidacy for a job opening. Any time you find yourself using a long word, stop and ask: Is there a shorter synonym? This habit will help make your resume a clear, concise record of what you offer to employers.

Keep a clean, simple format

For accounting professionals, a conservative resume format is usually best. 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. Use color sparingly, if at all. 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 Resumes

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 more likely to flag the document for the hiring manager.

For this reason, you should add a keyword-rich “Skills” or “Expertise” section to your finance resume (as in the examples above). With this section, you can show the breadth of your skill set and boost the chance your application gets noticed. Below are common keywords for finance:

Common Action Verbs for Finance 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 resume:

How to Align Your Resume with the Job Description

Follow these four steps:

Step 1: Jot down a few notes on the type of work environment you like best. For instance, you may prefer an environment that’s:

• Client-focused
• Collaborative
• Fast-paced
• Forward-looking
• Process-oriented
• Quality-focused

Step 2: When you find a job posting that intrigues you, look for any details about the office environment or work culture. They will often appear in any description included about the hiring company or team you’d be part of.

Step 3: Compare those details against your preferred work environment, and highlight any overlap.

Step 4: Add a line or two to your Profile emphasizing that similarity. For example, say you prefer a work environment that’s customer-focused, and the posting says “We are a business that places client satisfaction at the center of every decision”. You can then add a Profile line such as:

This simple exercise can make your resume more accurately show why you’re a great fit for the hiring company as well as why they should call you for an interview.