Accounting Resume Red Flags

A resume is a key document to communicate your potential value in the professional world. Whether you're the one searching for a new position or the one screening and interviewing candidates, it's important to understand how to analyze resumes, including industry specific characteristics that can be subtle indicators of potential, or lack thereof. Today, we are going to discuss some red flags that might show up on an accounting resume.

Disclaimer: in the context of this article, “Red Flags” are indicators that a job candidate may not be of quality. These indicators are not the only means of measurement and it is entirely possible that some very good accountants may have these red flags on their resume. Make sure you look at the whole picture when assessing any resume. 

🚩Red Flag #1 - College Resumes Without Working Experience

Lately, I've seen many college level resumes that have zero working experience and to me, that's a huge red flag. Students have tons of working opportunities between internship programs from public accounting firms as well as other roles that college students take on while they are getting their degree like serving or working in retail.  While having accounting related experience is certainly preferable for accounting positions, many entry level jobs simply require a good work ethic, a decent education, and common sense. Students that don't have any type of experience on their resume looking for a full-time job in accounting will have a tough time because they have not gone out of their way to demonstrate any of these characteristics. If someone handed me a college level resume that had no working experience on it, I would likely assume that the candidate was either: unmotivated, uninformed, or willfully ignorant of how the professional world operates and as a result, their resume would likely get thrown in the trash before any screening call could take place.

If you're a student who has not gotten any work experience yet, stop reading this and go apply to some of the many opportunities available to you before you graduate, you'll thank me later.

🚩🚩Red Flag #2 - Experienced Hire Resumes with Extended Time in Entry Level Positions

Entry level positions are designed for those who are just starting their career with an education and maybe a little bit of work experience under their belt. Everybody starts in one of these positions at some point in their career, but it's not great to be at that level for more than a few years. In the public accounting world, most firms will promote its competent employees from associate to senior associate after two or three years. Those who don't get promoted in this time frame are usually struggling with the difficulty of the work or are not well liked by the wrong people. When I come across a resume where someone has many years in various entry-level positions, I can't help but think “what's wrong with this person? Why haven't they been promoted?” The best way to avoid this scenario for yourself is to be a career driven individual and pursue opportunities for promotion in your early career.

🚩🚩🚩Red Flag #3 - Senior and Manager Level Resumes with Title Inflation 

For more experienced hires, a huge red flag I commonly see is the job description and the job title not really matching up, usually due to title inflation. These candidates tend to have more impressive titles than their job descriptions would lead you to believe. Due to this mismatch, it can be really hard to trust that the job candidate can perform to their title level at a different company where the standards might be different. I've identified this as an accounting specific red flag because accounting departments very wildly across different companies. Some companies have three people in the entire accounting department while others might have 30 people doing only billing and accounts receivable. This means that one person might be the director of accounting with three years of experience at a small company handling five vendors and three customers while another person might be a senior accountant working on thousands of transactions for a larger organization. 

So What?

Remember, red flags don’t define you as a person, but they can be the difference between getting a phone screening call and getting your resume passed up in the recruitment process. If you have or are trending towards any of these accounting red flags, do your best to address them as soon as you can to be attractive to future employers and maintain your career trajectory!