Write an Accounting Resume
Finance professionals are often tasked with writing detailed resumes that will help them reach out to those who are offering specific jobs or positions within a company. If you are a person with accounting skills, qualifications and experience, and looking to place yourself within the job market, you could benefit from some of the most common tips for writing an effective accounting resume. Here are some of the ways that experts advise beginners to write an accounting resume that will stand out.
Steps
- Identify specific types of accounting that are your specialty areas. These should be prominent in the resume. Some job seekers even put them in a formatted bar across the top half of the first page. These specialty areas can include tax accounting, litigation-related activities, internal auditing, personal finance consulting or anything else related to any kind of financial accounting. Identifying specialties helps you to stand out to the reader.
- Work your resume to relate to a specific job market. One of the important steps that many beginners miss is that an accounting resume may look different in various job markets. When times are flush, your resume writing process may be different than when a specific industry is contracting. Know about the various trends in your field or industry, and who is hiring in your area, to make your accounting resume more relevant and specific to your cause.
- Include education. Any relevant degrees, certifications or other completed education will be extremely important in your accounting resume. Don't leave these out, and make sure they are placed prominently.
- Mention any past experience that relates to your desired job role. Even things that are not directly correlated to the type of accounting jobs that you are looking for may pertain to your accounting resume, especially if they include various soft skills such as office management, leadership and delegation, software skills or general accounting ledger practice experience.
- Look to identify daily or long-term account experience. Even a basic daily accounting job at a hotel or retail establishment can be relevant to a greater career as an accountant.
- Choose a good font size and style. When you have the rough content for your resume, start approaching the actual visible aspect of the document by creating your rough draft and working in various elements that pop out on the page.
- Make use of white space. Making your accounting resume into various separate modules or elements can make the document look better, and allow readers to read it quicker and more efficiently.
- Pay attention to the style and tone of your resume document. Experts suggest avoiding first-person language, as well as overly colloquial words and expressions, in the resume. Make it sound professional, and read back over it, changing any areas that don't seem to flow well.
- Do the final edit. Look over the document and catch any spelling and grammar areas, as well as larger style issues. This is extremely important as a way to make sure that your document looks good when you send it out.
