Whether you are only starting your career as a bookkeeper or already have years of experience and are looking for new, bigger opportunities, there is one thing you can’t do without in both cases - a well-written bookkeeper resume.
A resume is a way to communicate your key experience, strengths, and accomplishments to a recruiter. It can get you employed, but only if you do it right.
If you are wondering how to format your resume, how to use the information from a bookkeeper job description for resume, and, most importantly, how to craft a winning resume that will get you a job, Skill Hub is the right place! This article is your step-by-step guide to writing a brilliant bookkeeping resume. Here you will find plenty of handy tips, as well as many professional bookkeeper resume examples that will help you write your own resume and land a job with ease.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, pegs the average bookkeeper's salary at $45,560 per year and $21.90 per hour. A professionally written bookkeeper resume can save you up long-term to land a job faster. You can let finance resume writing service help you today. Invest in your future today!
How to Write Bookkeeper Resume?
If you are wondering how to write a resume for a bookkeeper job, let’s start with the basics. Although there might be certain distinctive features depending on your skills, experience, and the position you want to occupy, in general, all resumes follow a similar structure. There are a number of essential elements that have to be inherent in every resume. These are:
- Contact info
- Summary or objective
- Section with professional experience
- Education
- Skills section
Your resume can also include extra sections that emphasize your additional achievements, awards, special skills, certifications, and anything else that can make you look like a better candidate.
Moving on from the basics, there are also some more specific resume writing tips that can help to write job-winning bookkeeper resumes:
- Wrap up your biggest achievements and strengths in an effective resume summary.
- When describing your experience, quantify your skills and accomplishments with some hard numbers.
- Use targeted keywords and action verbs.
Further in this article, we will discuss how to approach each section of your resume in particular and provide you with decent bookkeeping resume examples.
Choose the Best Format for Bookkeeper Resume
You shouldn’t be surprised if we tell you that recruiters don’t read each resume they receive fully. In most cases, they only quickly scan received applications and then pick out the most suitable candidates for further consideration.
Thus, if you are wondering what makes some bookkeeping examples of resumes worse than others, the answer is simple - they don’t engage. And this happens most often because an applicant chooses a bad resume format.
When writing a resume for bookkeeper jobs, you should be thoughtful about the format. To land an interview, you need to show your best qualities first to grab the recruiter’s attention right away. And that’s where a well-chosen format can help you a lot.
There are a few formats used for resumes. They include reverse-chronological, skills-based, and hybrid types. For this particular resume, we recommend sticking with the reverse-chronological format. It helps you to put your best assets up front and stand out from the crowd.
Also, we always recommend job seekers carefully read every bookkeeping job description they apply for. This will give you a better understanding of what a particular employer is searching for and tailor your resume to these expectations.
Write Bookkeeper Resume Summary or Summary Objective
So, both recruiting firms and potential employers only spend a bit of time reading each resume. That is, you need to make your job application really snappy to hook them on instantly and prove that you are the perfect candidate. To do it, you need to start your resume with a well-written bookkeeping description.
There are two ways you can go. With a summary, which is a snapshot of your past experiences and biggest achievements. Thus, it is a good option for bookkeepers with a solid professional history.
Here’s a sample for you:
Result-oriented bookkeeper with the AIPB certificate and 6+ years of experience. Saved the company $1M by identifying a recurring error in tax filing. Cut record-keeping time by 25%. Looking to leverage proficiency at [Company Name].
Also, you can begin with a bookkeeper resume objective. It focuses on your energy and passion and suits those who don’t have much work experience yet.
Describe Your Bookkeeper Experience
There is no secret that most employers are looking to hire humans with decent experience. That is why the section on your bookkeeper resume that describes your work history plays a huge role in your success.
Here are the basic details that you should include in every experience section entry:
- Job title
- Company name
- Years of work
- Several short snippets that reveal your main duties at the workplace and relevant achievements
Sounds quite easy, right? However, it can get tricky if you have no work history. In this case, you’ll need to be much more inventive to make your resume shine. There are a few tricks to help you write a great entry level bookkeeper resume sample with no experience:
- Find a way to relate your non-bookkeeping experiences to the job description by highlighting the key skills.
- Make the education section your major point of focus and take it from there.
Put Your Education on Resume for Bookkeeper
If you read a standard list of bookkeeping duties and requirements, you will find out that you might only need a high school diploma to build a career. However, that doesn’t mean you don’t need to list your education.
If you only have a high school diploma, it is important to specify your education to show that you meet the minimum requirements and can be a good potential employee to recruit. If you have a BA degree or higher, then mentioning your level of education can get you ahead of the competition.
What to specify in your education section? There is no need to make a big focus on this section. In most cases, it is enough to name the school, years, and level of education. To ensure even better results, you can mention a few academic or extracurricular accomplishments, but make sure they go in line with the bookkeeper responsibilities list.
Mention Skills on Bookkeeper Resume
Writing your bookkeeping skills resume section has certain pitfalls. You have to understand that recruiters don’t need to know about each and every skill you have, and they don’t want to. Don’t make a common mistake by including a long list of your skills. Instead, read the job description, add skills that match it plus a few extra skills to complement your resume.
Another great tip for listing your bookkeeping skills is to blend hard and soft skills together. Today, employers and recruiters are paying much more attention to personal and interpersonal skills than ever. Therefore, it is important that your resume shows both your professional and personal sides.
Here’s a list of the key bookkeeper resume skills and qualities that you can consider:
- Attention to detail
- Communication skills
- Critical thinking
- Accounts payable
- Accounts receivable
- Error detection
- Balance sheets
- Problem-solving
- Payroll accounting
- Collaboration
- MS Office
- Interpersonal skills
- Billing
- Self motivation
- Tax calculations
- Honesty
- General Ledger
Pro Tip: To make your resume skills section look impressive, don’t hesitate to add some hard numbers to quantify your accomplishments. For example: Cut reporting costs by 30% by integrating MS Excel spreadsheets to track expenses.
Read more on How to list references on Resume. There is the latest data included.
Add Contact Info to Your Resume
If you ask us what is one thing bookkeeping samples resumes can’t do without, the answer would be the contact details. The contact section is an essential part of every resume. It has to be there and it also has to be easy to notice.
Most often, the contact info is placed at the beginning of a resume or, depending on the chosen template, in another easy-to-notice place. Whichever way you choose, the two key things to take care of is that it is easy to see and that your contact info is relevant and up-to-date.
What details should be in it? The basics include your full name, personal or work phone number, and email address (tip: make sure your email looks professional, the perfect option will look like name.surname). You may also add extra details on your resume bookkeeper, for example, a link to your LinkedIn account.
Add Other Sections to Your Effective Resume
Even a flawless resume can’t guarantee that you will land a job. Hiring managers receive dozens and even hundreds of applications for every offer. The bad news is that most of the candidates’ resumes look pretty much the same. And if yours doesn’t stand out, you will lose.
How to stand out? The best way to do this is to add some extra sections to your resume to showcase your passion and energy and make sure your application doesn’t get lost in piles of others.
In your additional resume sections, you can mention your test results, awards, publications, certifications, hobbies, and anything else that sells your strengths. But always carefully read bookkeeping description to see how you can use it to your benefit.
With these extra sections you can not just stand out and secure yourself a job, but even ensure yourself a higher bookkeeper salary by gaining a competitive advantage.
Use Key Action Verbs
If you really want your resume to drive attention and help you get more interviews, you should ensure that you avoid cliches and stand out from the crowd. For this, we recommend using targeted resume keywords, also known as action verbs. These action verbs can help you make a more powerful impression on a hiring manager.
Here are some options you can use:
- Accompanied
- Accomplished
- Achieved
- Borrowed
- Bought
- Capitalized
- Captured
- Carried out
- Cataloged
- Centralized
- Decreased
- Deferred
- Defined
- Edited
- Elected
- Eliminated
- Fielded
- Gauged
- Generated
- Implemented
- Led
- Offered
- Offset
- Patterned
- Penalized
- Rated
- Segmented
- Selected
- Served
- Targeted
- Terminated
- Unified
- Updated
- Verified
- Viewed
- Weighed
- Welcomed
And if you don't want to spend a day creating a perfect resume, instead, spend a minute placing an order with our best resume builder service. Our resume writers will get busy so that you don't have to. And you'll be able to add ready-made blocks of content after your order is done.
Bookkeeper Resume Sample
All bookkeeping resume samples are different. Some of them are really job-winning, while others are not so good. Hopefully, after reading this article, you now know what exactly distinguishes a good resume from a bad one.
To wrap up everything you’ve learned from this article, let’s once more look back at the steps you need to take to create a winning resume:
- Provide relevant and up-to-date contact details.
- Depending on your level of experience, start with a short but snappy resume summary or objective.
- List your past jobs and describe each experience.
- Put your education on your resume.
- Make a bullet list of your best soft and hard skills.
- Put additional sections that highlight your strengths.
What else has to be included in all bookkeeper resume samples? One last tip we want to give you is to get certified (if you haven’t done it yet) and add a certification section to your resume. In fact, you don’t need a certification to be a bookkeeper. Still, bookkeeping resumes that do include a certification section attract more attention from recruiters and give their owners higher chances of getting hired.
If you're still not sure you have enough resume writing skills, you can address our resume experts or use online resume writing services. You will get a resume suitable for a new job position with no hassle. Progressive, promotional, perfect.
And don’t hesitate to specify your certification in your resume summary or objective.
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