As a new finance graduate, you need the right hard and soft skills to kickstart your career. Understanding which skills employers are looking for helps you land interviews that can lead to job offers.
Including essential skills in your resume shows you are qualified for finance roles. Your ability to carry out the job duties and responsibilities encourages hiring teams to contact you for interviews.
Discover the essential skills to list in your resume to kickstart your finance career as a new graduate.
Accounting Skills
Proficiency in reading and understanding financial documents is important for your finance career. Taking data from balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, annual reports, and related documents helps guide company leaders about the business’s financial health and future initiatives. For instance, tracking a company’s assets as money flows in and out of the business informs stakeholders how much is available at a given time and how much is required to cover outstanding debts.
Investing Skills
Investing is a form of capital allocation that generates profits outside of business operations to help sustain long-term company growth. For instance, many companies prioritize sustainable investing. Therefore, an understanding of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors helps determine which opportunities to invest in.
Financial Reporting Skills
Examining revenue, cash flow, expenses, sales, and other historical performance data helps predict a company’s financial future. This process helps company leaders make strategic planning, budgeting, hiring, and other business decisions.
For instance, cash flow forecasting helps determine whether a company should have enough cash to cover future expenses. This process supports company stability.
Decision-Making Skills
Using data to make financial decisions is essential for career success. Demonstrating logical thinking to support your recommendations helps guide financial business decisions.
Understanding the company’s mission, goals, and initiatives helps you make financial decisions that position the business for success. For instance, calculating a project’s return on investment (ROI) helps determine whether the company should take on a project.
Management Skills
The ability to manage a company’s capital structure, reporting processes, and employees is essential for your finance career. These tasks require clear direction, ongoing communication, and collaboration.
For instance, management skills are needed to prepare a company’s quarterly budget for performance tracking. These skills also are required to prepare a budget proposal to recommend future initiatives.
Are You Ready to Kickstart Your Finance Career?
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