Chief Financial Officer Resume: Examples, Template, and Resume Tips
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If you are looking for a job as a Chief Financial Officer (CFO), I’m assuming that you have the math skills, the ability to strategize, and the ability to make tough decisions.
As a Chief Financial Officer, you will be in charge of the strategic planning for your organization’s financial growth and development. You will also be responsible for evaluating and mitigating the company’s financial risks.
You will also take charge of all activities related to finance, investment, and investment. This means that you will lead the organization’s funding process and control how the company’s funds are spent. You will be in charge of employee pay records, administering the organization’s financial system, monitoring budgets and expenditures, approving payouts, approving invoices, and making sure that the company’s financial reports are always delivered on time.
As a CFO, you will also work closely with the CEO and other C-suite executives to develop the organization’s goals and objectives, come up with strategies on how to achieve these goals, oversee the implementation of these strategies, and develop and monitor key performance indicators.
Owing to the responsibilities that come with it, the position of Chief Financial Officer is not an entry level position. You will need some level of experience and expertise, which means that this is a position that most people get to by working their way up the career ladder.
In most cases, organizations looking for a CFO will make it clear that they want someone with about 10 years of experience or more.
However, it is sometimes possible to get a job as a CFO without a lot of experience, especially if you have a Master’s degree in Business Administration, Accounting, or Finance, or if you are applying for the position in a startup company.
The job outlook for CFO jobs is quite favorable. Today, more and more companies are making the decision to have a CFO in order to increase opportunities for collaboration and reduce the workload for the CEO.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that CFO jobs will grow by 16% in the 10 year period between 2018 and 2028, which is a way faster than the national average growth rate for all jobs. The BLS reports that the median salary for CFOs is about $61.53 per hour, or $127,990 per year.
Despite the positive job outlook, the high pay and the prestige that comes with the position of Chief Financial Officer means that there will a lot of competition for these positions, and if you want to trump the competition, you need to optimize every aspect of your job search.
This starts with having a bullet-proof resume, since your resume is your first point of contact with a prospective employer.
Since this is a high level position, your Chief Financial Officer resume should immediately show excellence. It needs to show your extensive experience both in finance and in strategic management, your outstanding achievements at each position you have held, and the impact you have made to the organizations you have worked for.
If you are wondering how to build such a Chief Financial Officer resume, you are in the right place.
This guide will teach you everything you need to know about creating a CFO resume that will have employers hoping they can convince you to work for them – not the other way round, where candidates desperately try to convince employers to hire them.
Before we dive in, I want to mention that if you are in a rush, or if you don’t like the hassle of writing and designing your resume from scratch, you can always use our resume builder, which automates the whole process and allows you to apply any of the dozens of professionally designed resume templates on your CFO resume.
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER RESUME EXAMPLES
I have always believed that learning happens faster when there are practical examples to learn from, so let’s start by looking at some examples of great Chief Financial Officer resumes.
This way, as we go through the rest of the guide, you’ll understand exactly what we are trying to achieve.
Highly Experienced Chief Financial Officer Resume
Chief Financial Officer Resume Without Much Experience
WHICH FORMAT SHOULD YOU USE ON YOUR CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER RESUME?
There are several types of resume formats to choose from. So, which one should you use on your CFO resume?
I mentioned at the start of this guide that you will have to climb up the career ladder to get to the position of CFO.
This means that most of the people applying for CFO positions already have adequate experience, and therefore, the reverse chronological resume format will work best on your CFO resume.
The reverse chronological resume format is popular because it is easy to read and is organized in an orderly manner. This format requires that you list your most recent achievements, experience and qualifications first, and therefore, the recruiter can tell your current abilities at a glance.
When using this format, your resume should be ordered as follows:
- Personal information
- Resume summary
- Professional experience
- Education
- Skills
- Certifications
- Other sections (optional)
NAILING THE PERSONAL INFORMATION SECTION OF YOUR CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER RESUME
The first thing your Chief Financial Officer resume needs to do is to tell your potential employer who you are, what you do, and how they can get in touch with you in case they like the information in your resume.
Here are some tips to keep in mind when writing this section of your resume:
- Only use your official names. If you have a middle name, write down the initial, rather than the whole name. For instance, if your name is Morgan Francesca Saylor, write Morgan F. Saylor.
- Do not use your current work email address. Use a personal email address, and use your official names on this email address.
- Your physical address is optional. If you decide to include it, however, you don’t have to write down the whole address. Your city of residence is enough.
- If you decide to include a link to your LinkedIn profile, make sure your profile looks professional.
- If you have a personal website dedicated to your career, you can include a link to it as well. However, don’t include links to websites where you share personal stuff.
Your personal information section should look like this:
RESUME SUMMARY OR OBJECTIVE: WHICH WORKS ON A CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER RESUME?
Whenever there is an open position, recruiters will receive quite a number of applications, and while the number is lower for top level positions such as CFO compared to other positions, the applications might still be quite a lot, and the recruiter might not have enough time to read through each and every resume.
Therefore, you need to quickly let them know what you are bringing to the table, and why they should hire you.
Ordinarily, you have the option of doing this using a resume summary or resume objective, depending on your level of experience. As a candidate for a CFO position, however, you already have adequate experience, and therefore, you should opt for the resume summary.
The resume summary should give a synopsis of your professional experience. It should answer the following questions:
- What is your greatest qualification?
- What is your level of experience?
- What is the greatest impact you have made in the organizations you have worked for?
- What are your greatest strengths?
Here’s what a good resume summary should look like:
TAILOR THE PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE SECTION OF YOUR CFO RESUME TO THE JOB DESCRIPTION
When hiring for top level positions, such as the CFO, the board has to be very careful. Hiring the wrong person can turn out to be very disastrous for the organization.
Therefore, before they hire you, they want to be very certain that you can do the job. So, how do you give them the assurance that you can get the job done? Through your experience section.
If you have done something in the past and excelled at it, you are more likely to successfully do it again compared to someone who has never done it before.
Therefore, your professional experience section needs to communicate to the board that you have excelled in a similar capacity before, and are therefore likely to excel once they give you the job.
There are several things you need to do in your professional experience section to convince the board that you are the right person for the job. These include:
- If you have extensive experience in financial management positions, only include this experience and leave out the rest. However, if you do not have much experience in financial management positions, you can include your other experience before you got promoted to financial management positions.
- For each entry in your experience section, mention the name of the company, your position in the company, and the duration you worked there.
- For each entry, mention your key responsibilities, and the achievements or impact you made. Instead of mentioning everything you were tasked with, mention the responsibilities that are highly relevant to the company you are applying to. You can tell what is relevant by reading through the job description.
- Make your achievements and impact quantifiable by using numbers and percentages to describe them.
The experience section of your CFO resume should look like this:
SHOW THAT YOU HAVE THE RIGHT ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS FOR THE POSITION
Being a top level position, most employers will reserve the CFO position for someone with a master’s degree, which is why the education section of your CFO resume is very important. Without this section, you might miss out on a job simply because the board wasn’t sure whether you meet the academic qualifications.
When wring the education section, start with your highest academic qualification, mentioning the qualification, the college where you got it, and the years when you went to that college.
Move on to the next academic achievement, and so on. If you performed well in college, let the employer know by mentioning your GPA or grade. However, if your performance was average, you can leave this out.
The education section of your CFO resume should look like this:
FLAUNT YOUR SKILLS IN YOUR CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER RESUME
The main reason an employer hires you is not because of your education or experience, but because of your skills.
The education and experience section only help the employer to determine whether you have the skills they want, because these can be verified beforehand. On the other hand, anyone can claim to have certain skills, and the employer wouldn’t know until they hired them.
That said, it is always advisable to include a highlight of your best skills in your resume. This way, the employer can quickly tell if you have what they are looking for. They can then confirm whether you actually have the skills by going through the experience section of your resume.
It’s good to note that the CFO position involves more than financial aptitude. You will also need to come up with strategies, manage people, and so on. Therefore, when writing down your skills, don’t just focus on your technical skills.
Include some soft skills as well to show that you are a well-rounded candidate who can work with other top level executives, manage people, make decisions, and steer the organization towards its goals and objectives.
Some of the skills you might want to include in your CFO resume include:
Technical Skills
- Financial planning
- Corporate strategy
- Budget control
- Financial reporting
- Financial forecasting
- Investment management
- Investor relations
- Accounting
- Cash management
- Taxes
- P&L management
Soft Skills
- Leadership skills
- Interpersonal skills
- Decision making skills
- Analytical skills
- Communication skills
- Problem solving
- Orientation to detail
- Critical thinking
- Collaboration
- Adaptability
- Organization
- Time management
SHOWCASE YOUR PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATIONS
People who are committed to their career don’t stop at getting a bachelor’s or master’s degree. They go further and get certifications that equip them with the skills they need at work.
Having a professional certification can give you an edge over an equally experienced candidate without the certification.
This is why you should always include your professional certifications in your resume.
Some professional certifications that are relevant to Chief Financial Officers include:
- Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
- Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
- Certified Management Accountant (CMA)
- Financial Risk Manager (FRM)
- Certified Financial Planner (CFP)
- Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC)
- Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA)
MAKE YOUR RESUME EXCEPTIONAL WITH EXTRA SECTIONS
Here’s the thing: most of the other candidates applying for the CFO position you are eyeing will have the education, the skills, and the experience.
Therefore, you need to give yourself any advantage you can. A good way of doing this is to include extra sections in your resume.
These are sections that present you as a well-rounded candidate and show your passion and commitment to your career.
Some of the extra sections you should consider adding to your CFO resume include:
- Professional memberships
- Conferences and conventions
- Publications
- Honors and awards
- Volunteer experience
WRAPPING UP
As a Chief Financial Officer, your job is to make sure that your company’s finances are in tip-top condition, but for you to get that job, your CFO resume also needs to be in tip-top condition.
Fortunately, the tips covered in this guide will help you to create such a resume. From there, all you need to do is learn how to interview with the top brass and impress them, and if you can do that, you will definitely snag that job.
Wishing you all luck as you search for your dream job, and remember, if you are in a rush, or if you don’t like the hassle of writing and designing your resume from scratch, you can always use our resume builder.
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