Finance Manager resume example & writing guide

A finance manager resume is like a wise investment; it provides a high yield that can help you reach your goal of your next great finance manager job sooner. A lackluster resume won’t show off your professional assets and could lead your job search into the red. Bank on interview offers with a resume that garners high interest. 

How can a resume do that? By ensuring it sends a clear and direct message about your career achievements.

Finance professionals have to engender trust and exude confidence or no one will allow them to take over the books. When money is at stake, you may not get a second chance. A finance manager resume that doesn’t project those qualities won’t get deposited on the HR manager’s desk. That first impression is all important. Make sure your finance manager resume gives a recruiter every reason to contact you to schedule that interview.

Resume guide for a finance manager resume

Check out the assets of Resume.io. Our guides and resume examples cover over 500 professions, and our resume builder makes creating a world-class resume easier than ever.

This resume guide and corresponding finance manager resume example will cover the following:

• How to write a finance manager resume
• Choosing the right resume format for car sales
• How to add your contact information
• Using summaries
• Adding your car sales experience
• Listing education and relevant experience
• Picking the right resume design/layout
• What the car sales market looks like and what salary you can expect

How to write a finance manager resume

Before you dive into writing your finance manager resume is understanding what sections to include. Your resume should contain the following elements:

• The resume header
• The resume summary (aka profile or personal statement)
• The employment history section
• The resume skills section
• The education section

Before you invest, you pitch your financial plan to the C-Suite and back it up with clear reasoning. A compelling job application package for a finance manager is a pitch as well. It’s a summary of what you can do for the company backed up with clear reasoning. To create the best resume for a finance manager you need to do your due diligence on the company, the job and the hiring committee so you can correctly aim your pitch.

Your resume is the key document in your pitch. Don’t hedge your bets. Ensure success by sticking to these guidelines:

• Build a picture of financial success instead of listing tasks and responsibilities. Think of your career accomplishments and use them to illustrate to the company how you will enhance their finance team. Every bullet item, skill, and sentence of your summary should answer the question; “What can you do for the company?”
• Speak directly to your reader by personalizing your finance manager resume. Address the company’s needs. Adjust your tone and style to match the culture.
• Choose a resume template that makes a visual first impression of professionalism.
• Attend to the keywords and phrases that will help rank your resume high enough to pass through the ATS filter when applying for a job online.

Choosing the right resume format for financial management

An organization that HR personnel are accustomed to should be your priority here. Typically, that means reverse chronological order, meaning that whenever you are listing positions in your employment history section or your academic achievements in your education section, you start with the most recent and work your way back. Below is an example of this format.

If you’ve come to finance through accounting or another business avenue (or are making a change from a completely unrelated field), you may find an alternative format, such as the functional format, is better suited to telling your career story. This format, which also works well for those looking for their first job,  focuses more on skills and less on work history.

When exploring the many resume templates in our resume builder, select the format that best suits your situation. We have plenty of versions of the three formats available as resume examples.

Finance managers should project a more conservative image (no one wants someone getting too creative with their cash), so when you’re ready to choose a design, aim for a professional template.

Include your contact information

When the recruiter is inspired to offer you an interview, you want to be sure that nothing stands in their way. That means prominently and professionally displaying your contact information. The header of your resume serves to highlight your contact data and as a design element.

Here are the items to include (and a couple to leave out): 

• Full name & title. List your first and last name. If you have a common name, add a middle initial or your middle name. Use the title of the role you are pursuing.
• Professional email address. Use a clean format like [email protected].
• Phone number. List a number for the phone you keep on hand and check to make sure your greeting sounds professional.
• Location. List your city and state, but not your street address or zip code. It’s both outdated and unsafe. Note 'Willing to Relocate' here if applicable.
• LinkedIn. If your LinkedIn profile is active, relevant, and shows your sales network, include it here.

Don’t include:

• Date of birth: Not necessary and could potentially lead to age discrimination.
• Personal details: Marital status, social security number, passport number, etc.
• A photo: Recruiters are sensitive to the appearance of bias and a photo is not relevant to your employment.

Make use of a summary

When you present an idea, you start with the main point: I’m about to save you $5 million! Now that you have their attention, you can back up this bold statement with the reasons your plan will work and why you are the right person to execute it. 

Approach the summary of your finance manager resume the same way. These two or three sentences should illustrate exactly what you can do for your prospective employer and what skills you will apply to ensure sound financial decisions and oversight.

Consider answering one of the following questions, using strong active language:

• What are you most proud of in your career to date?
• What is your financial management philosophy?
• How will your experience enhance the position on offer?

Answering these questions will transform your resume summary from a highlight reel of achievements mentioned in your employment history to a compelling profile of your professional value add. 

You could say: 

• Finance manager adept in researching and recommending profitable investments 

or to make your statement more intriguing by quantifying your success: 

• Finance manager with  track record of increasing company investment returns by 5% year-over-year.

Both of these statements say that you can make wise investments, but the second tells the company that you have the skill to improve their bottom line. 

You can find adaptable finance manager resume example summaries below:

Outline your finance manager work experience: reveal your net worth

Beginning at your most recent job, work your way back through your finance career about 10-15 years to develop your finance manager employment history section. Hone in on the accomplishments most related to the job you are applying for to maintain a laser focus on the company’s goals. 

The bullets in this section serve to draw the eye in, so keep the recruiter’s attention by starting off with a strong verb such as analyzed, budgeted, negotiated, communicated, mentored, forecast, directed, evaluated or advised. 

Each company defines the role of a finance manager slightly differently, so be aware of what you will be tasked with if you get the job. Correlate each success you choose to include with a requirement within the job listing. If there’s no mention of taxes or tax preparation, there’s no need to include your knowledge of tax law. 

Finance pros are numbers people, so consider the following questions to answer in your job descriptions:

• What was the size of the budget you were entrusted with?
• How much were the cost savings your innovations resulted in?
• During your tenure, what investment advice did you give and how much did it increase financial growth?
• How large of a department did you manage?

Each of these questions will lead to an entry that focuses on the results you achieved as a financial manager instead of listing your responsibilities as a static list. 

Note the difference between a line listing a responsibility:

• Provided financial reports and recommendations to C-suite

vs. one touting the accomplishment:

• Presented recommended investment strategy to C-suite during quarterly reporting that drove up returns by 5%

Take a look at the finance manager employment history resume sample below:

How to write a finance manager resume with no experience

If you’re looking to move up from financial analyst or any other finance role into a managerial role, you need a slightly different approach than our sample of a financial manager resume provides because you’re trying to convince a new company to give you a promotion.

Use your summary to explain why you’re ready for this new role. Then, within your work history, describe any supervisory role you have had. It’s likely that you have carried out many aspects of a managerial role in your current position. For example, have you filled in when the finance manager is on vacation? Include that. Did you help prepare and present financial analysis and recommendations to the managerial team? That’s also a role the finance manager takes on. 

Follow the advice in the rest of this guide, including using the sample resume for a finance manager to help you decide which of your achievements are most likely to convince a recruiter you’re ready to move to the next stage of your career.

Include the relevant key skills that make you a great finance manager

Don’t underplay the importance of your skills list—it may be the first place a recruiter looks in their initial pass-through of all the finance manager resumes they have received. Personalize this section to ensure your skills match those your prospective employer seeks.

Balance hard and soft skills since both are valuable to employers. Any worthy finance manager resume will include hard skills such as financial forecasting and the software used to perform it, advanced mathematics, project management, risk mitigation and expertise in compliance. 

But soft skills such as problem-solving, leadership, communication skills, and attention to detail can make all the difference in your candidacy.

The resume builder offers several pre-written key skills to choose from with proficiency ranges you can set. You can also write in your skills.

Here’s what the skills box looks like in our finance manager resume template. 

While the skills section performs an important role in a resume for a finance manager, a great resume is skills-focused throughout. Simply listing a skill does not illustrate how you use it to add value at your company. No summary is complete without a sentence on a shining achievement and how you accomplished it. The same is true for each bullet item in your employment history.

Listing “leadership” is fine, but here are some examples of how you can demonstrate what that means to you:

• Mentored each year’s intern class of five business students, leading to hiring of at least one post- graduation.
• Promoted communication among financial analysts and between finance team and other stakeholders.
• Guided and provided feedback to team producing financial reports and analysis.

If you list finance software, include its name in the item in which you illustrate your financial analysis success. This will also another place where you can add keywords to help you pass through the ATS filter.

The job description will illuminate which skills the hiring team finds most important.

Detail your education & relevant finance manager certifications

The education section is where you list your academic achievements. For finance managers, that is at least a bachelor’s degree in finance or a related field such as business or economics. If you have earned an MBA, include that first and drop your high school diploma.

But the education section can be more than that. You may also list:

• Certifications or training. Any finance certifications you have earned or training you have completed illustrates your readiness for the job and that you always strive to improve and stay current with financial trends and regulations.
• Professional memberships. Your network is valuable. Show it off here.

If you have more than a few of each of these, you may opt for a separate Certifications or Professional Activities section. Because employers prefer at least five years experience in finance, your employment history section should take priority over this element of your resume.

Pick the right resume layout and design for a finance manager resume

When you present financial analyses and thoughtful recommendations for the company’s future, you want to be taken seriously and for the management team to know that you did your due diligence. Not a decimal point is out of place and your graphs easy on the eyes.

Take this philosophy into the design of your financial manager resume. The goal is to communicate your message without flash, but with enough oomph to keep your application in the forefront of the recruiter’s mind. That’s why your layout should aim for clarity, professionalism and readability.

For a finance manager resume, clean lines, a crisp font and discreet color or none at all work best. We recommend choosing one of our field-tested resume templates from our professional selection. 

Finance manager text-only resume example

Finance manager job market and outlook

It’s a great time to be a finance manager! According to US News, not only is the market hot, but it’s the best business job and the No. 2 job overall. The most desired skills are international finance knowledge and financial instruments and securities, including derivatives.

What type of salary you can expect in financial management 

The median salary for a finance manager in 2022 was $139,790. The typical income range for the same period was $104,150-$203,720. That makes it the 12th highest paying job in the US News list.

Key takeaways for building a finance manager resume

Finance manager’s are in demand. A resume focused on achievement will help you net the job you desire, especially when you highlight your analytical and presentation skills.

Your attention to detail and optimization for the ATS will help you develop a flawless and attention-getting resume 

The online resume builder takes the tedious task of formatting and designing out of your hands, giving you more time to write each section and get your resume out there!