Skills for a Resume: What Finance Employers Ask For

Explore the Finance resumes hub and the finance careers guide.

The best skills for a resume are the ones the job posting names and you can prove in a bullet. In finance that core is short: communication, collaboration and Excel, then forecasting or reconciliation, depending on the seat.

I counted the skill words in 19,815 US finance job postings, across three titles.

Most skills lists online say teamwork. The postings almost never do.

This page is the skills block our finance resume guide keeps pointing to.

What skills should you put on a resume?

Put the skills the posting names that you've really used, in the posting's own words, and prove the important ones in your bullets. For a finance resume that means communication, collaboration and Excel, plus the process the seat runs: forecasting for an analyst, reconciliation for an accountant, leadership for a manager.

A skills section is a short list of claims, and the interview tests each one.

If you can't talk about a skill for two minutes, it comes off. The ones the posting leads with also need a bullet that proves them.

Which skills do finance job postings actually name?

Communication is the one skill near the top for all three finance titles I counted, in 74 to 80 percent of the postings. Collaboration and Excel come up in more than half of every title's postings, at 56 to 61 percent and 53 to 68 percent. Past those, each seat has its own leader: analytical for analysts at 71 percent, reconciliation for accountants at 68, leadership for finance managers at 70.

On September 30, 2026, I pulled 60 days of US postings through Adzuna's job search API and counted the share of each title's postings naming each word.

That's 5,458 financial analyst postings, 9,993 accountant postings and 4,364 finance manager postings.

Three limits before you lean on it.

• A mention isn't a demand. A posting that says you'll present to senior leadership counts toward leadership.
• The search matches word stems, so I dropped five words that caught unrelated phrases.
• Big employers post more than once. One company with ten open analyst seats counts ten times.

Hard skills vs soft skills on a resume

Hard skills are the tools and processes you can be tested on, like Excel, forecasting or reconciliation. Soft skills are how you work with people, like communication and collaboration. Finance postings name both, and the top soft skills come up more often than most hard ones, so you need proof of each.

The posting's exact word matters.

Employers still want the skill.

In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey, nearly 80 percent of employers said they look for evidence of teamwork on a new graduate's resume.

So if your skills line says teamwork, change it, then prove it in a bullet.

Stakeholders works the same way. A bullet that names who you worked with (sales, operations, a budget holder) covers it without the jargon.

On the hard side, O*NET lists Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, SQL, Tableau and Power BI among the hot technologies for financial and investment analysts.

The postings agree on Excel, much less on the rest. SQL is in 14 percent of financial analyst postings and PowerPoint in 17 percent.

How do you list skills on a resume?

List skills in one short block near the bottom, grouped by kind: tools, finance processes and credentials. Keep it to the skills this posting names that you've used, in the posting's spelling, most important first. Soft skills belong in your bullets, where you can show them working, rather than in the list.

A line or two is enough. Fifteen tools in a row reads like the posting pasted back to itself. Set the block in the same plain font as the rest of the page, and which fonts stay readable to a person and the software lists the safe ones.

When I set up my own fit scoring, the fix was a bank of important keywords from each posting instead of the whole job posting. A skills line works the same way, and how that changed my scoring is in the finance careers guide.

Credentials split hard by seat. CPA is named in 38 percent of accountant postings, 30 percent of finance manager postings and 16 percent of financial analyst postings. MBA shows up in 27 percent of finance manager postings and 2 percent of accountant postings, and CFA stays at 6 percent or under for all three.

A mention is often a preference, so don't skip a seat because the letters are missing.

If the posting names a system you haven't used, leave it off, and matching a system name honestly covers what to write instead.

How do you prove a skill in a resume bullet?

Prove a skill by writing the work it produced: what was true before, what you did, and what changed. "Strong collaborator" is an adjective anyone can type. "Partnered with sales to rebuild the forecast" is a claim someone can ask you about, and that makes it believable.

The second line proves four skills without naming one.

Ratings are the weakest proof. In one interview I was asked to rate my Excel, and I said nine out of ten.

A number like that gives the reader nothing to test, which is why the Excel test in our financial analyst guide comes down to what you've built.

"Advanced Excel" on a skills line is the same rating in different clothes.

The bar I'd hold an Excel bullet to is "actually being fluid and adaptive depending on the problem". So write about a model you changed when the question changed, and why FP&A models have to bend explains what that looks like.

The manager round will ask about every line, so know every bullet cold.

How do you show soft skills on a resume?

Show soft skills through what happened. Communication shows when someone outside finance acted on your number, collaboration in work with another team, problem-solving in a fix. An adjective proves nothing.

The same NACE survey found nearly 90 percent of employers look for evidence of problem-solving skills.

Evidence is the word to notice. When I'm hiring, what makes me say yes is a candidate who gets that in finance, nothing pretty much goes according to plan. A list can't show that. A story about a plan that broke can, and the hiring side of a financial analyst interview covers the rest of what I listen for.

A failure story can feed a skill line too, once you finish it. A model change that broke another team's process ended as my stakeholder line: find everyone who uses the output before you touch it.

Past the proof, what keeps me reading someone else's resume is the mix. I know this person can do the job, so what's unique about them? On mine, a line about what I do outside work was a key point that kept coming up. Don't try to be unique for one company. Be specific about you, and the companies that find it interesting will reach out.

Every soft skill you list is a behavioral question you'll probably get, so build those stories first with the finance behavioral interview guide.

Which skills change from analyst to manager?

The people words climb and the process words fall. Leadership goes from 55 percent of financial analyst postings to 70 percent of finance manager postings, and mentoring from 9 to 26 percent. Reconciliation drops from 20 to 12 percent, so a manager's skills block should lead with people and decisions.

The change I noticed going to manager was that people wanted decisions from me, whereas as a senior analyst they'd come for answers. What an FP&A manager makes covers that step.

So a manager's skills line can say leadership and mentoring, as long as the bullets show a decision you made and someone you developed. Mentoring counts without direct reports.

When I started in FP&A, I was trained by an analyst with years in the seat, and on a later handover to another group, I trained that analyst. The senior finance manager section says why that belongs on the page.

Accounting and financial analyst skills for a resume

An accountant's resume should lead with reconciliation, deadlines and Excel, since 68, 42 and 62 percent of accountant postings name them. A financial analyst's should lead with analysis, budgeting, forecasting and Excel, each named in 60 to 71 percent of analyst postings, plus presentation at 50 percent.

For accounting skills, name the work plainly. Asked about the accounting side in an interview, I said I'd owned the close and done the reconciliations for business units.

The assistant controller section shows how much of that seat is exactly that work. On a resume, the bullet adds what you reconciled and how often.

There are bracketed formulas for close, reconciliation and audit work in how to write accountant resume bullets.

If you're moving from accounting to FP&A, the skills that carry over from accounting are a bigger list than you'd expect.

Which skills should you leave off a resume?

Leave off anything you can't prove or explain in an interview, anything every candidate has, and adjectives about you rather than your work. "Microsoft Office", "team player" and "hard-working" take space a real finance skill could use, and none of them earns a follow-up question you'd want.

Resume skills checklist

Before you send, check the skills block against the posting and your own bullets. Every skill should use the posting's spelling and be something you could talk about for two minutes, and the ones the posting leads with should have a bullet above that proves them. A tool you can't defend comes off.

Save each version next to its application in your job application tracker. The skills line is what you'll change most.

List fewer skills. Prove every one.