Accountant Resume Example

Follow these simple resume writing tips to ensure you’ve created a resume that reflects why you’re the best possible accounting candidate.

1. Prominently Display Licenses & Certifications

If you’re looking to boost your accounting career, you need to choose a path. Getting a widely recognized certification in the accounting field will help improve your resume and land you better jobs.

Investopedia has an excellent breakdown of the types of accounting certifications you can earn. The bottom line is that earning a CPA is the gold standard, while the other certifications can help give you an edge in niche industries.

So if you’re a corporate banker, a comptroller, a treasurer, or some other type of specialist, your resume is going to be unique to your experience.

In addition, if you’re trying to find a job that is outside your current specialty, you need to target your resume to prove to the hiring manager that you have the skills to do the job. Don’t overlook this aspect, as it could mean the difference between getting a $60,000 salaried job or not.

2. Show You Have the Necessary Accounting Skills

What kind of skills should you include on your resume? Avoid hobbies and interests — instead, focus on your hard and soft skills and achievements:

Include key accounting skills on your resume to show the hiring manager you have what it takes to succeed as an accountant.

The basic accounting skills required for an accountant include more technical skills than many other professions. For instance, your math abilities should be at a high level since errors can end up costing a company or firm a lot of money.

If you specialize in a particular branch of accounting, then you’ll need to include the relevant technical accounting skills on your resume, such as in auditing or how to perform a facilitated risk analysis process (FRAP).

You’ll also need strong computer skills to do the job effectively. You should know how to use spreadsheets and software such as QuickBooks, as well as be comfortable using different operating systems, and, since your employer will likely have you working with Windows or MacOS.

Organizational skills also fall under the umbrella of skills needed for accounting. Because you’ll have several projects progressing at the same time, you want to schedule them in a way that helps you avoid missing any deadlines, and keeps you motivated so you don’t get sidetracked.

You must also properly file paperwork (in both physical and digital forms) like receipts and invoices, since this is a government requirement.

If you plan to work as an accountant for private clients, you should work on refining your customer service skills as well. Having the ability to remain patient when your client is being unclear about a problem or when they don’t understand your explanation is an asset to accountants everywhere.

Additionally, good communication skills can help you progress in your accounting career. Communicating well is an important account manager skill at a firm where you don’t have to interact with clients often, since you still need to work within a team.

3. Make a Strong Argument in Your Career Objective

Here is the career objective from the sample resume above:

Certified Public Accountant with 5+ years of experience of ledger processes, reconciliations and streamlining reports. Possess an MBA. Seeking to leverage my professional expertise and experience into a managerial role as a corporate banker.

Model your career objective after this example. Include these three important pieces of information (which have been bolded above):

1. How many years of experience you have as an accountant, and the main duties you’ve performed
2. The highest degree you hold, and your certifications
3. Describe which role you want to fill, and why you’d be a good choice

Short, persuasive, and concise, the career objective is a classic way to start a powerful resume. Make sure you get it right with our helpful resume objective writing guide.

4. Quantify Your Professional Experience

Accounting is a numbers-based profession, and your resume needs to reflect that. You can use numbers to describe your job duties, and also impress the hiring manager.

Below are some general examples of information you can quantify on an accounting resume:

• Size of the budgets you managed
• Amount of any investments you’ve managed, and how profitable they were
• Net worth of the company you’ve worked for, and what your main duties were for it
• The size of the investments you’ve reconciled
• The number of the contracts you’ve negotiated
• The amount of money you’ve saved or earned the company via your knowledge, experience, and efforts

The candidate in the sample above quantified their resume in three places (shown in bold):

• Trained and supervised 2 new employees, ensuring they maintain fastidious attention to detail
• Create financial reports and supported all areas of responsibility within a 5-person finance team
• Manage a $350,000 budget, with a reduction of costs totaling 15% over two years

Above all, your resume should be showcase your accomplishments. Do not repeat bullet points, or list bland and meaningless duties.

5. Use Key Action Verbs

Try using some of the below action verbs to add depth, clarity and specificity to your document. Action verbs make great openers for experience bullet points and can also be used on cover letters to target them to the specific position.

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Accelerated Acclimated Balanced Bargained Calculated Canvassed Decided Decentralized Earned Eased

Facilitated Familiarized Gained Gathered Handled Identified Illustrated Launched Lectured Lead

Maintained Managed Observed Obtained Participated Passed Raised Ranked Safeguarded Salvaged

Scheduled Screened Secured Tabulated Tailored Uncovered Undertook Validated Valued Voiced

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And that’s it! Best of luck on the job hunt.