A perfect resume is your stepping stone to land up with an accounting role in either a Big 4 or with an investment bank. Accounting is a dynamic & complex business environment & you need to have a perfect strategy in place to market yourself in this competitive field.
Every accountant wants to highlight their technical expertise in their resume, however lot of them fall in the trap of simply documenting all details of technical accounting processes without putting it within the context for the reader. It is important to note that your resume is not a blueprint but a marketing brochure. You need to sell yourself & you need to write for an audience who may not be an accountant like yourself. The following are important to make your accounting resume standout from the crowd:
- Clear applicant tracking system(ATS): Making your accounting resume pass through robots/automatic screening mechanism is your first step. These robots are applicant tracking systems(ATS) evaluate your resume to make sure that it contains the requisite skills before passing it to the next stage. If ATS cannot locate right keywords, your resume will not pass the first stage. To ensure your resume covers all relevant keywords, align your achievements to standard accounting competency frameworks. ACCA & CIMA provide these. CIMA has management accounting bias & CIMA framework is broken down into technical, business, people & leadership. The latter three are important for accountant who are looking to explore wider business roles
- Structure your resume as bullet point achievements including relevant keywords & important metrics: The best way to structure your resume is to populate it with relevant achievement in bullet points. Each bullet point should explain what you achieved.Start with the benefit you generated for your employer along with a keyword. The following technical competencies can be part of your resume:
- Corporate Reporting: Preparing business reports to support stakeholder decision making; cost accounting & management; financial accounting & reporting; business planning.
- Financial Management: Implementing finance decisions to create & maximize value in the areas of investment appraisal, taxation risk management, treasury & working capital management.
- Taxation: Compliance with tax regulations; communicating with authorities to establish & manage tax liabilities & utilize tax planning techniques.
- Governance, Risk & Control: Implementation of risk identification procedures by defining & setting internal control systems.
- It’s all about metrics: For each of your bullet point achievements, focus on documenting what you did & what you achieved out of action you took as far as possible in numerical terms.
Are you looking for some career advice, guidance about how to write an executive resume or rebranded LinkedIn. As the founder & executive resume coach at Sushant Kumar Ventures, offering executive resume writing & LinkedIn profile writing services for modern day job seekers, I would be happy to chat to help you meet your career goals; Sign up here.
