📊 Accountancy & finance
CV writing for accountancy and finance roles in Europe
What audit firms, industry finance teams and shared service centres look for in an accountancy CV: qualification status, reporting standards, systems, close cycles and controls — checked against the country you are applying to.
Quick answer
An accountancy CV is screened on three things: where you are in your qualification, which reporting framework you actually work under, and which systems you have used in anger. Recruiters filter on those before they read a single achievement, so they belong near the top.
What the CV must contain
- — Qualification status (body, stage, expected completion)
- — Reporting frameworks you work under (IFRS, local GAAP)
- — Systems and tools, named specifically
- — Experience with scale stated (turnover, entities, team size)
- — Education and any exemptions
What gets applications binned
- — Hiding qualification status, or leaving a reviewer to guess how many papers remain.
- — Describing duties without any scale — 'prepared accounts' means nothing without size.
- — Omitting the reporting framework, which is the first filter for group roles.
- — Generic 'MS Office' instead of the actual finance systems used.
- — No indication of language or local-GAAP fit when applying cross-border.
Credentials worth naming
- — ACA / ACCA / CIMA / CPA
- — Registeraccountant (RA) or Accountant-Administratieconsulent (AA)
- — Wirtschaftsprüfer or Steuerberater
- — Expert-comptable / réviseur d'entreprises
- — CFA or Treasury (AMCT) for finance-side roles
Where the demand is
- — Netherlands (shared service centres, group reporting)
- — Ireland and Luxembourg (funds and fund administration)
- — UK (practice-to-industry moves, financial control)
- — Poland and Portugal (finance hubs and captive centres)
Quantified and concrete. Numbers are the language of the field: state turnover, entity counts, close timelines and savings, and give the framework you reported under.
The vocabulary reviewers screen for
Qualification
aca · acca · cima · cpa · chartered · registeraccountant · wirtschaftsprüfer · steuerberater · expert-comptable · réviseur · cfa · part-qualified
Reporting framework
ifrs · us gaap · local gaap · dutch gaap · hgb · frs 102 · statutory accounts · consolidation · group reporting · disclosure
Core process
month-end · year-end · close · audit · reconciliation · variance · forecast · budget · cash flow · vat · corporate tax · transfer pricing
Systems
sap · oracle · netsuite · exact · afas · twinfield · dynamics · navision · coda · hyperion · power bi · excel
Work these into real sentences about real work. A keyword list at the bottom of a CV fools nobody and reads as padding.