Are You Getting Noticed? How to Stand Out in Your Job Search

Landing a job interview requires more than just a top-notch cover letter and resume. Your skills, experience, and qualifications likely align with other in-demand candidates.

This is why you need to add something that makes you stand out to hiring managers. They want to see how your contributions and results differ from other candidates’ contributions and results. Showing the unique value, you can offer a company increases your odds of being contacted for an interview.

Implement these tips to help secure your next accounting and finance interview.

Include a Pain Point Letter with Your Resume

Rather than a cover letter, submit with your resume a letter discussing a company pain point you noticed. Include a challenge the organization is facing and how you would solve it if you were hired. This shows you understand the company and are able to add value to it. Hiring managers appreciate candidates who are proactive problem-solvers.

Share Your Professional Portfolio

Create an online portfolio of your professional qualifications and work examples to submit with your resume. This may include a copy of your resume, transcripts, reference letters, or copies of your licenses or certifications. You also may want to add financial statements, variance reports, or financial analyses you created. Make sure your work examples tie in with the highlighted items from previous job postings you applied to. Change the numbers to avoid sharing confidential information.

Consider using information specific to the company you’re interviewing with to create financial documents. For instance, if the business is publicly traded, analyze the online financial statements to create different financial ratios and analyses. Then, use the information to prepare recommendations for the company. This may include paying down debt, reducing inventory, or increasing collection efforts. This shows proactive investment in the company’s success.

Secure an Employee Referral

Find out whether you know an employee at the company you want to work for. If you do, talk with them about referring you to the hiring manager. Include how your skills, experience, and qualifications make you well-suited for the role. Provide your resume as well. You’re more likely to land an interview with a referral than without one.

Partner with a Recruiter

Listing your skills, experience, and qualifications in your cover letter and resume likely isn’t enough to land an interview. You need to show how you stand out from the other candidates and can provide unique value to the organization. Submitting a pain point letter with your resume, sharing your online portfolio, or securing an employee referral can help.

You also can partner with a recruiter from Casey Accounting & Finance Resources to increase your odds of landing an interview. Contact a recruiter or submit your resume today.

5 Skills to Highlight in Your Accounting Resume

As you prepare to write a resume for your accounting career, it’s important to consider what to include or omit. Your resume will look different depending on whether you are right out of college or have been working for 15 years. Use the tips below to develop an outstanding accounting resume so that you will get noticed by the right hiring companies.

Discuss Technical Skills

One of the most important things you need to include on your accounting resume is that of your technical skills. Technical skills include proficiency in SAP, Oracle, Sage, and other high-level tools. Any financial software you know how to use should be listed on your resume in order for you to stand out from the crowd.

Include Accomplishments

What have you achieved in your previous employment? Show that what you have done in the past. Highlighting your accomplishments shows that you can take on more responsibility and be able to generate results. You won’t settle for doing average work.

Quantify Your Success

To tie in with those mentioned accomplishments, how strong was your success? Being able to show that your work resulted in an improvement of performance or a decrease in expenses for an organization shows that you will increase efficiency and be able to keep everything running smoothly.

Ability to Prepare Financial Statements

Another skill you should feature is the ability to prepare financial statements. Financial statements have many different segments and you need to discuss all of them on your resume. You need to show that you can handle the income statement, the balance sheet, the statement of retained earnings and the statement of cash flow.

Financial Analysis

The most successful accountants out there today are able to explain how well they perform financial analysis. When you work in financial analysis, you need to be detail oriented. If you want to find a job in the profession, your resume will need to have just as much detail, if not more. If you cannot properly define this skill on your resume, it will be difficult to land a job.

As you build a new resume, you need to highlight the skills mentioned above if you want to impress the hiring manager and receive an offer of employment. Work with your recruitment representative at Casey Accounting & Finance Resources to create an accounting resume that will work for you.