Financial Analyst Resume Sample

If you love analytics and numbers and you’re looking for a challenging, high-paying job, then you should consider a career in financial analysis. Not only is the number of analyst jobs expected to grow by 6% this decade according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but it’s also remote-friendly — making it a great career option if you need the flexibility of working from home. 

To maximize your chances of getting an interview, you need a resume that markets your skills and helps you demonstrate to the hiring manager that you’re qualified for the role. 

To help you get started, here are three tips for writing your financial analyst resume:

1. Open with a strong financial analyst resume summary

As financial analyst jobs at prestigious firms are highly sought after for the higher paycheck and reputation, your application is likely one of the hundreds that the hiring manager will have to review.

To stand apart from the competition and catch the recruiter’s attention right away, you need to put the most impressive parts of your resume right at the top. The best way to do this is to start your resume with a convincing resume introduction that highlights your key strengths in the following format:

• Job title
• Years of experience
• Top skills
• Top achievements 

As a financial analyst, a resume summary is a highly efficient way of marketing yourself quickly and convincingly as it helps the hiring manager understand whether your highest qualifications fit the job. 

A resume summary is ideal when your purpose is to showcase your qualifications and what you’ve accomplished, making it a good option regardless of whether you’re looking for a job as a senior financial analyst, or you’re starting your career and have notable work experience (from internships or analyst programs, for example).

Ultimately, a professional resume summary should entice the hiring manager to continue reading your resume by showcasing what you can offer at a glance. Prove you’re a capable financial analyst from the beginning of your resume, and you’ll more quickly capture the attention of employers, hiring managers, and recruiters.

2. Include the right financial analyst skills for the job

Financial analysts need a range of hard and soft skills to effectively perform their daily tasks. To demonstrate to employers that you’re qualified for the position, include skills relevant to the job on your resume.

If you’re unsure what skills to put in your resume, especially if you’re an entry-level financial analyst, look for examples mentioned in financial analyst job listings. Hiring managers typically state exactly what they’re looking for in their ideal candidate in job advertisements — so meet their expectations head-on by including them in your resume.

For reference, here are some of the skills that hiring managers expect to see on a financial analyst’s resume, divided into technical and soft skills:

Technical skills

• Cost accounting
• Financial modeling
• Data analysis
• Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Financial software and tools (Oracle, Equitrak, SQL)

Soft skills

• Organizational skills
• Leadership skills
• Verbal & Written Communication
• Problem-solving

To show the hiring manager that you’re a well-rounded candidate capable of handling heavy workloads, include a mix of both soft skills and hard skills essential for a financial analyst job.

3. Write a detailed professional experience section

Your work experience is the most important part of your job application. To convince the hiring manager that you’re a competent financial analyst, your experience section needs to be highly detailed and focused on your accomplishments.

Because a financial analyst’s job involves working with numbers and reviewing data, it’s crucial to use numbers when describing your professional experience. Quantifying your resume accomplishments demonstrates to the hiring manager what their team can gain from hiring you. 

For example, here’s how a financial analyst with over five years of relevant experience uses hard numbers to highlight their accomplishments:

FINANCIAL ANALYST
Blackburn Inc., Pittsburgh, PA  / February 2017 – Present

• Streamlined analysis of financial data, increasing accuracy of our forecasted revenue projections by 9%
• Compile weekly reports and lead monthly and quarterly presentations to brief staff on financial outlook
• Monitor investments and provide recommendations based on current market trends
• Increased revenue by an average of 17% annually through an optimized investment strategy
• Develop onboarding materials and oversee training of 15 new employees each year on average

FINANCE INTERN
Stuart and Son’s, Philadelphia, PA  / October 2016 – February 2017

• Assisted in the development of a new risk assessment strategy, preventing nearly $750,000 in losses
• Compiled monthly reports on the company’s financial outlook to guide management decision making
• Developed accurate analysis of competitor market share leading to more effective marketing strategies
• Produced reports detailing the impact of debt financing on company’s net income to boost cash flow by 22%

By quantifying their achievements, this experienced candidate demonstrates how they contributed directly to the success of the company with concrete results. In contrast, applicants who only use generic, unquantified language will fail to stand out to hiring managers looking for a strong financial analyst to join their team.

Additionally, using resume action verbs to describe your accomplishments is another easy way to make your experience more eye-catching and impressive.

When possible, include finance-specific action verbs like “restructured”, “systemized”, modeled”, or “assessed”. Such language makes the scope of your work easier to understand for the reader, and helps you look like an achiever rather than someone simply coasting in their role. 

Here’s an excerpt of a financial analyst job description, with finance-specific action verbs highlighted in yellow. 

And here’s an example illustrating how this candidate put the above advice into practice and wrote an efficient work experience section.