Finance Manager CV Sample

CFA, CA

• Senior Finance Manager with 12 years of experience leading financial operations at renowned global INCs, including Facebook & Twitter. Led end-to-end compliance for Twitter’s IPO in 2013 (NASDAQ: TWTR). [This opening is particularly memorable due to its extremely high-profile achievement. I usually list achievements at the end of the exec summary, but it is beneficial to showcase very high-key points early on, to create a lasting impression. This is her ‘personal brand’ —the HR officers discussing this CV are likely to use it to refer to her (e.g. ‘let’s call the Twitter IPO lady in for an interview’). If you have any major projects or numbers that demonstrate your ability/skillsets, include them in the first point.]
• Wide-reaching domain experience across multiple Finance-related fields, specializing particularly in FP&A and risk modelling. Known for producing detailed financial planning & risk models as part of advisory duties to C-level management, providing insights into business health to support strategic and growth planning operations. [Finance is a very broad field. As such, it’s important to highlight the areas you specialize in to distinguish yourself and reassure the employer that you hate the theoretical knowledge to support their operations. If the employer is an asset manager looking for an analyst, a bank loan officer is unlikely to fit the bill.]
• Extensive theoretical and practical knowledge of major global accounting and regulatory standards, including IAS, US GAAP, SEC, and IFRS, as well as compliance and reporting procedures for NASDAQ entities. [After multiple financial scandals, ‘compliance’ and ‘regulation’ are highly sought-after buzzwords— they are important considerations for almost every financial firm out there. A strong backing in such areas is thus an added advantage.]

• Lead team of 16 staff to oversee full spectrum of finance functions with APAC revenues in excess of 1 billion USD, collaborating directly with Group CFO on full spectrum of financial matters relating to business strategy, performance management, budgeting, forecasting, cash management and sales analysis. [The first point of every job description should capture and summaries your entire job, as well as demonstrate your value-add. Here, we highlighted her finance domain expertise, and the fact that she reports directly to the CFO. At such a high-profile firm, this means that she is also in a position of responsibility. Finally, we also bring up the fact that she handled >1 bn worth of revenue, to demonstrate that she is able to drive financial operations at the highest level involving extremely large sums.]
• Coordinate with internal teams such as Sales & Accounts, HR. Facilities and Legal to accurately model past and future financial performance.
• Drive process improvements in automation of financial reporting through close collaboration with up-stream process owners.
• Build and present detailed financial models to drive investment decisions for senior management.[This line and the following lines describe other academic functions you do in the school]

• Played key role in improving accounting process during monthly dosing; streamlined process enabled quicker processing of accounts and improved productivity resulting in reduction in monthly closing from 3 days to 1 day. [Achievements should ideally be related to her expertise and domain (Finance). This is a good example of how she leveraged her accounting knowledge in improving efficiency— the perspective employer will want to know how she can add value to his company if he should hire her.]
• Presided over due diligence on key acquisition target; audited financial statements and performed deep analysis into customer base, geographies, acquisition, and retention rates. CFO utilized findings as part of M&A business plan for board of directors and shareholders, resulting in successful M&A deal valued at >USD20M. [At first glance, this might look like a regular job description. However, there’s a very small result tagged to it — her actions resulted in them securing a lucrative deal. Differentiate our regular duties from exceptional achievements by showcasing the value it has brought in.]
• Single-handedly identified fundamental accounting structural flaw resulting in cost avoidance of USD 10M; led change in Excel toolkits and Hyperion mapping resulting in stronger controls and improved accounting practices. [Similar to the first point, we show how her finance expertise has led to value being created for her company. Value can come in many shapes and sizes — in this case, she managed to avoid incurring costs because she realized something was wrong. This would also interest a potential employer— cost savings mean an improved bottom line. We also name-drop a few key software suites used in Accounting and Finance to demonstrate her familiarity with them. This wasn’t the main intention, but adds value to the CV.]

• Managed overall P&L of >USD200M for 2 engineering teams based in Twitter HQ in the USA. [Since this role is older, we don’t place as much emphasis on the details. Still we shouldn’t neglect it – we inserted some nice stats to showcase the significance and seniority level of her responsibilities here.]
• Analyzed financial payback and strategic fit of projects and provided independent and objective assessment for further evaluation.
• Produced management reports and ad hoc analysis for senior management to support strategic decision making. [Again, we choose duties which are similar and/or transferable to the job ad she has in mind. If you don’t have a particular job ad that you are targeting, you can choose to include a wider variety of responsibilities, but be sure to keep the CV’s overall length in mind. Don’t exceed 2.5-3 pages, and cap it at –6 points per role. If the CV is too long, the employer won’t want to read it.]

• Key member of finance team tasked to support Twitter’s IPO in 2013. [Because this is such a major project, we chose to break down her various contributions and details. This allows us to better demonstrate how she managed to successfully complete this particularly outstanding project. Also, this may look like part of the job descriptions, but it is a one-off project that is very, very major (a company can only IPO once), and as such comes under the Achievements section.]
• Overhauled business processes to shorten finance reporting times in order to comply with quarterly reporting requirements.
• Liaised with external vendors to customize SAP FICO modules to accurately report cost of employee stock options in US GAAP financial statement reports.
• Studied and complied with all FTC and SEC public company reporting requirements. Received no audit failures or penalties from authorities.

• Supported performance management and reporting for APAC business unit with annual revenues in excess of 20 million USD. [This role is really long ago: Still, it’s fairly relevant, so we shouldn’t neglect it. We include some details about her role and its significance. For older roles, you can get away with 1-2 points of description.]

• Oversaw successful integration of acquisitions in Hong Kong, Australia & Japan; mapped existing firm business processes, identified gaps between acquired company and parent company, installed corrective controls, and made recommendations on organization right sizing due to redundancy. [While metrics and statistics are very important in contextualizing an achievement (we need to show just how significant it is), sometimes those just aren’t available. They could be corlfidentia4 or difficult to measure, or perhaps you simply forgot because it’s so far in the past. No worries — it’s just a bonus.]

• Drove the audit of clients across the healthcare and software industries. [KPMG is a well-respected firm. However, the job is over 10 years old not really related to either her current position or her target role, and is also an entry-level position. We could have skimmed over this, but since there’s only one left we chose to include it. If you have a list of old roles, you can choose to fist them as Previous Professional Experience’ instead.]

References available upon request

• Certified Chartered Accountant (CA®) | Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA) | Hong Kong| 2010
• Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA®) | CFA Institute | Hong Kong| 2012 [The CFA and CA certifications are both well respected in the finance and accounting industries. Include such certifications if you have them. You can also include in-progress certs that you are currently taking, as long as you are clear that you have yet to receive the actual certificate itself. The ad of wanting to take the certification is already valuable in its own right.]
• Bachelor of Science (Hons) | Accountancy | Hong KongUniversity | 2007 [The original CV included JC and 0 Lath, but those are no longer relevant. Include only tertiary education and above your highest qualification attained, whichever is applicable.]

• SAP FICO | MYOB | Hyperion | Bloomberg | Thomson Reuters
[These software suites and databases are widely used within the accounting and finance industries. They are thus beneficial to include, to show that you have the knowledge and can use them in jour new role.]

• Nationality: Chinese
• Languages: Fluent in English, Bahasa Melayu, and Mandarin (Oral and Written). Basic command of French. [If you are fluent in multiple languages, be sure to include that here. It’s always a nice bonus to have. If you have official certifications e.g. JLPT, you can include those too.]
• Availability: 2 months’ notice [Availability can differ – you can remove this if you are unsure]

References available upon request