Staff Accountant Resume Examples and Templates for 2023

Staff Accountant Resume Examples

Years of Experience

Tips for Writing a Better Staff Accountant Resume

Keep your format clean and simple

For finance and 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.”

Avoid non-finance jargon

Any time you write 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 is especially tempting in finance and accounting fields, which have plenty of specialized terms (like “amortization”) with no shorter equivalent. These terms deserve a spot 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. A few more usual suspects:

delay 🡪 postponement
duty 🡪 responsibility
launch 🡪 implementation
law 🡪 regulation
skill 🡪 capability

Whenever you find yourself using a long word, stop and ask: Is there a shorter synonym? This habit will help keep your resume clear and concise.

Use your Profile to show how you solve accounting issues

What is your approach to isolating and solving a company’s finance or accounting problems? And how do you feel that approach makes you successful in your field? What advanced knowledge do you draw upon to help solve those issues? By giving answers to these questions in your Profile, you can express your role’s important problem-solving aspect. For a detailed guide to writing your resume’s intro, read: How to Write a Resume Summary in Six Easy Steps

Common Key Skills for Staff Accountant Resumes

You can improve your resume by adding keywords.

That’s because most hiring companies now use an applicant tracking system (ATS), which scans each submitted resume for keywords relevant to the job opening at hand. When the company’s ATS finds a resume with many relevant keywords, it flags the document for the hiring manager.

To make your resume ATS-friendly, add a keyword-rich “Skills” or “Expertise” section (as in the examples above). Here are some common keywords for staff accountants:

Common Action Verbs for Staff Accountant Resumes

One of the most common resume mistakes is using too few verbs. You may repeat the same generic verb (say, “Manage”) many times, or rely on passive phrases like “Responsible for” or “Accountable for”. These tendencies can distract your reader and fail to show the dynamic nature of your work. The following list will help you mix up the verbs on your staff accountant 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 that much more relevant to the job at hand.

Jacob Meade

Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW, ACRW)

Jacob Meade is a resume writer and editor with nearly a decade of experience. His writing method centers on understanding and then expressing each person’s unique work history and strengths toward their career goal. Jacob has enjoyed working with jobseekers of all ages and career levels, finding that a clear and focused resume can help people from any walk of life. He is an Academy Certified Resume Writer (ACRW) with the Resume Writing Academy, and a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) with the Professional Association of Resume Writers & Career Coaches.