Finance

Finance CVs are filtered before they are read

The first pass is mechanical: a qualification, a standard, a system. Get those three strings into the parsed text and the rest of the page gets a chance.

More than in any other field, finance recruiters screen on credentials that either exist or do not: a professional register, a qualification, an audit background. These are searched as exact strings, so an abbreviation alone is a gamble: write both the abbreviation and the full name.

The second filter is the system. An ERP is not a detail of how you worked, it is a large part of what you are being hired to do, and the migration you survived is often the most interesting line on the page.

Write the credentials in full

Give the qualification its whole name and its abbreviation, the awarding body and the year. A register number, where you have one, settles the question entirely and takes eight characters.

  • Both forms of the standard: IFRS and International Financial Reporting Standards.
  • The professional register by its own name, with the year of admission.
  • Studies in progress, marked as such: a part-qualified candidate is a category employers hire for.

Describe the close, not the duties

Responsible for monthly reporting says nothing about difficulty. The entity count, the currencies, the consolidation, the number of working days to close and what you cut it to: that is the same sentence with the information left in.

  • Size the perimeter: entities, countries, currencies, revenue under your responsibility.
  • Name the systems: SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, and the reporting tool on top of them.
  • Say what an audit or an inspection found, when it found nothing. That is a result.

Common questions

How do I explain a gap for study or family?
As a dated entry with a one-line reason, in the same format as the jobs around it. A gap that is labelled reads as a decision; a gap left blank reads as something being hidden, and in a field built on controls that is the worse of the two.
Do I list Excel?
Only with something after it. Excel on its own is assumed and wastes a line; Excel with Power Query and a monthly model of 40 cost centres is a description of what you can actually build.

Build this CV now

Start from a templateAnalyse my CV

This site uses cookies

Besides the strictly necessary ones, we use Google’s and OpenAI’s cookies to measure the results of our advertising and to understand how the site is used. They are set only if you accept, and refusing takes the same click. The privacy policy has the details.