2 Great Finance Director CV Examples (+How to Write a Finance Director CV)

If you’re looking to land finance director jobs, you’ll need to equip yourself with an effective CV. But preparing a finance director CV that gets results can be a challenging task.

We’ve prepared the ultimate guide to writing a CV for director of finance positions. Follow the steps in this guide and use our finance director CV templates to maximise your job search.

What’s included in this guide?

• A step-by-step guide to writing a great finance director CV
• The most important skills for finance directors and how to showcase them on your CV
• How to showcase your achievements and communicate your value as a finance director
• The best finance director CV format and layout
• Tips to optimise your finance director CV for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)
• 2 top class finance director CV templates

Start your CV with an engaging professional profile. A professional profile, often referred to as a personal statement or a summary, is a short introduction to your CV that communicates your experiences, skills and values.

When writing your professional profile for your finance director CV, focus on your key selling points. Show what makes you a suitable candidate for role you’re pursuing and communicate your senior finance experience.

Avoid generic statements. You don’t want your professional profile to read like a finance director job description. Think of the professional profile as your chance to convince recruiters to spend time reading your CV and invite you to a job interview.

Here is an example of a finance director CV’s professional profile:

Forward-thinking, analytically-minded CIMA qualified Finance Director, with over 12 years’ experience operating in senior financial leadership positions. Combines senior management experience with a continuous improvement mindset to optimise the performance of finance functions and support business growth.

Strong leader with a track recording of building and developing cohesive, high-performing teams and experience leading multi-site, global Finance teams of up 90. Adept at heading digital transformation and key financial projects that enhance efficiencies and streamline processes.

Finance directors lead all financial functions within organisations. They are business leaders who often work with CEOs to provide strategic leadership while aligning business and financial strategies. Their CVs should communicate such high-level expertise.

As Camino Partners cover in their guide on becoming a finance director, good finance directors see the bigger picture and understand the workings of entire organisations.

Including a skills section on your CV is one of the best places to draw attention to these kind of skills.

Key skills for finance directors include:

Financial planning, regulatory compliance, strategic leadership, team building, financial management, strategy development, process improvement, stakeholder management, digital transformation.

Now it’s time to include your work experience. In this section, you can show off your senior financial experience and accomplishments to set yourself apart from the competition.

When listing your work experience, use the reverse-chronological format. The reverse-chronological format involves starting with your most recent position and working backwards. Include the job title, company name, location and dates of employment. Then provide some information about your role and use bullet points to showcase your achievements.

Try to incorporate numbers and metrics into your achievements to make them stand out. Achievements that are quantified hold more weight as they offer more insight into the achievements and provides tangible evidence of the impact you made.

Here is an example:

‘Improved the accuracy of financial reporting by 18% by implementing new financial reporting systems and restructuring communication channels between business units.'

View our guide to using powerful action verbs on your CV to bolster your achievements.

If you have any voluntary experience or board-level experience, detail the experiences in a separate section.

In this section, list your qualifications and any relevant training. Start with your highest form of education, which for most finance directors is an accountancy qualification or degree.

Omit any training this is not relevant to the role of finance director. For example, customer service training would add little to no value to your finance director CV. And including it would take focus away from your relevant education and training.

How do you format your director CV’s education section?

Include your qualification, followed by the grade, university name, location and the dates of study.

Here is an example:

Master’s Degree (M.Sc.) in Finance (Distinction), Example University, London (2021)

Use the final section of your CV to list any additional information. This may include language proficiency, software skills, memberships and affiliations.

Depending on your experience, there a number of further sections that you might want to add to your CV. These include honours and awards, presentations and voluntary experience sections.

When pursuing jobs as a finance director, it’s important to use a professional, polished CV design and layout. Applying for finance director jobs, or other senior roles, with unprofessional or ‘junior-looking’ CVs can give a poor impression of you as a candidate.

To ensure your CV is professional in appearance, feel free to use one of our finance director CV templates. These CV templates are optimised for senior and executive roles, so they’ll help you make a positive impression on recruiters.

When preparing your finance director CV, it’s vital that you take steps to ensure the document is optimised for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).

What are Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)?

ATS is form of software used by recruiters and HR departments to filter and rank applicants’ CVs, with the aim of separating suitable candidates from less suitable candidates.

To make sure your CV ranks well with ATS, you need to ensure relevant keywords related to your profession are included throughout your CV. You also need to make sure it is professionally formatted, with clearly defined sections and a layout that is easy for the bots to read.

Our finance director CV templates are optimised for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), so feel free to grab yours now.

In most cases, finance directors should use the reverse-chronological CV format. The reverse-chronological format is the traditional type of CV, which focuses on your work experience in reverse-chronological order. These types of CVs are formatted in the following way:

- Name and contact details

- Professional profile

- Skills

- Work Experience

- Education

Recruiters tend to prefer the reverse-chronological format, mainly because it's the format they're accustomed to. It’s the most beneficial format when it comes to communicating your value as it efficiently conveys career progression and successes.

The CV templates in this guide are examples of finance director CVs that use the reverse-chronological format.

If you include your LinkedIn URL on your CV, many recruiters will navigate to your LinkedIn profile.

Getting recruiters to view your LinkedIn profile can be an effective way of enhancing your chances of landing job interviews. This is assuming that you have a powerful, well fleshed-out LinkedIn profile that illustrates your value.

If you haven’t got a solid LinkedIn profile, don’t include your LinkedIn URL on your CV until you’ve improved it. Linking to a weak LinkedIn profile can harm your chances of succeeding with your job applications, rather than improve them.

View our guide on LinkedIn headlines, including 15 great LinkedIn headline samples. Or take a look at our 20 LinkedIn summary examples.

If you’re not confident that you can convey your experiences, achievements and suitability for roles as a finance director on your CV, consider using a professional CV writing service.

A professional CV writer should be able to present you as an ideal candidate for roles by illustrating your value and making you stand out.

View CV Nation's premium CV service.