Life is sorted after you become a CA - we were told this and we believed this sincerely until we cleared CA Finals and realised that life is becoming more complicated instead. The next big task after becoming a CA is getting a career opportunity in your dream company. The competition is tough and you really need to stand out from the crowd to secure a job offer from your dream company; and the journey to stand out from the crowd starts with preparing an outstanding resume.
Based on our experience of reviewing thousands of CA resumes, we have compiled list of general mistakes that CA freshers do and should be avoided to craft an outstanding resume that gets you interview calls:
CA Attempts
Just write the month and year of CA final attempt in which you qualified as a CA. Don’t show groups individually. For example, if you cleared Grp 1 in May 23 and Grp 2 in Nov 23, show CA Final in Nov 23 rather than showing groups individually. If the HR needs details they’ll ask personally – no need to show attempts on the face of resume. Same way for CA Inter and CA Foundation.
Achievements and Extra-curriculars
- Use these fields to highlight your capabilities when you’re looking to switch profile. Example, if you wish to go in to Finance from Audit, write about courses or certifications that you might have done or anything else that can show your interest in the Finance field.
- You can show these fields even the top of your resume in the first section for HR to view in first instance.
- Highlight words that are relevant for the job profile you wish to go in for example, highlight financial modelling, financial statement analysis, ratio analysis, valuations if you want to go in Finance.
- Quantify your achievements and write action words –Detected a fraud of 10 Mn, Advised cost reduction of 15 Mn, etc.
- Mention Extra-curriculars which correlate with your preferred job profile –for eg.For equity research you can write -reading research reports, creating financial models, writing investment thesis, etc. But it’s not just about mentioning on your resume you need to do these practically also.
Experience, Academics and Qualification
- Use reverse chronological order for experience and academic achievement (ie., latest first)
- Show 10thand 12thonly if you have good scores –otherwise you can remove.
- For all academics and qualification you can remove percentages, marks and CGPAs, unless those are impressive.
- You can add a remark column and write –Exemptions in 6 subjects, cleared in first attempt, ranks, etc.
Communication
- Location: On the resume, write current location as location where you need job. For example, if your native town is in Rajasthan but you’re looking for job in Mumbai, you can write Mumbai in current location. If asked in interview about the same, you can give your relative’s/ friend’s address.
- Email address should be professional: Don’t use words like cool, king, queen, etc in email id.
- LinkedIn profile URL: Edit and keep simple like https://www.linkedin.com/in/jineshpagaria/. Go to “View profile” and click on edit button on “Public profile & URL” remove unnecessary characters and choose a short and clean URL.
Skills
- Top skills that you can add: English Communication, IT tools (Advance Excel, SAP, Power BI, etc). English communication is one of the most sought after skills in CAs by HRs.
- Keep skills minimum –4-5 but those which strongly coincide with your preferred job profile.
Things you can remove from resume
- Restrict your personal information to your email id and contact number (Details of parents, marital status, age, etc. are NOT required)
- Hobbies can be ignored unless you have something which links to your preferred job profile.
- Career objective
- Photo
- References
- Declaration/ Signature
- Cover letter – Not generally required for freshers
Formatting
Fonts
- Keep simple fonts – Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, etc which are simple and easy to read.
- Keep same font across resume. You can maximum use 2 font types –one common for all headings and one common for all body. Keep font size between 10-12 pts.
Body text
- Keep pointers instead of paragraphs
- Check indentation of the pointers –should start from same indent
Pages and Colours
- Keep 1 pager resume
- Use maximum 2 colors in your resume (lighter shades of blue or grey
Resume File
- Share PDF copy of resume
- Keep name of resume PDF file –Name Surname_Resume
Sequence of sections
Carefully check sequence of the sections – keep important sections at the top.
- If your articleship experience is good and relevant, keep articleship experience first.
- If your Articleship experience is not relevant to the job profile you wish to apply in, keep Extra Curriculars, Achievements, etc on top which show your interest for the profile.
Corenza advice to get offers from your dream companies:
- Set Google, LinkedIn and Naukri job alerts and apply at maximum jobs. Many companies post their jobs on their own websites or seek applications on email, find all those jobs on Corenza website here.
- Get your resume reviewed by some experienced. We, at Corenza also arrange Free Resume Review sessions for CA Freshers. Join our CA Freshers WhatsApp community to book your free session here.
- Practice english speaking: This is one of the most important aspect as CAs generally do not speak much until they clear the Final exam. However, this is the most important aspect that your employer is going to check and it comes only through practice. You can join our WhatsApp community here to practise the same for free.
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