CPA Resume: Examples, Template & How-To Guide

The hardest part is behind you. You’ve acquired specialized knowledge, accumulated experience, and secured a pass on your CPA exam. In reconciliation with all that, writing a CPA resume will be quicker and easier than processing weekly payroll.

Here’s how to report on your assets the right way. 

In this guide:

• A CPA resume example better than most.
• How to make the perfect CPA job description for resumes.
• How to write a resume for CPA jobs that stands out.
• Expert tips and examples to boost your chances of landing a CPA job.

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Looking for other resume examples and tips for different professions? Consider these related articles: 

• Accounting Assistant Resume Example
• Accounting Manager Resume Example
• Accounting Resume Example
• Accounts Payable Resume Example
• Accounts Receivable Resume Example
• Bookkeeper Resume Example
• Entry-Level Accountant Resume Example
• Senior Accountant Resume Example
• Tax Accountant Resume Example

CPA Resume Example

A CPA (Certified Public Accountant) is an accounting professional who holds a state license enabling them to provide accounting services to the public. A successful CPA resume should highlight the candidate’s relevant experience and skills, as well as showcase their attention to detail. 

Here’s how to write a perfectly balanced CPA resume: 

1. Give Your CPA Resume the Right Format

Imagine a financial report written in a decorative font, with tiny text and no margins. Or an invoice printed on colored paper and lacking any formatting, so you can’t tell where one section starts and the next begins. 

You’d do your best to avoid having to work with a document like that, surely. 

Formatting is just as important in resumes as it is in financial statements—you want to make your CPA resume look neat, inviting, and easy to navigate. 

Here’s how: 

• Use the reverse chronological layout for your resume—organized in a way that’s familiar to every recruiter, it’s the best resume format all around. It involves listing your most recent experience first, followed by older jobs and education. 
• Choose a font for your resume that’s easy to read—like Arial, Calibri, or Georgia. Nothing that would look out of place in official documentation. Size-wise, 10–12 points will be ideal in most cases. 
• Leave one-inch margins on your resume to make your document easier to follow. Some white space around each section of your resume won’t hurt, either. 
• Design a header for your resume that features your name and contact details. 
• Divide your resume into these sections, in this order: profile, work experience, education, key skills, and additional information. 
• Submit your resume as a PDF file, unless the job advertisement calls for a different format. 

Keep an eye on the length of your resume—in general, the shorter you can make it, the better your chances that it’ll actually be read from beginning to end. If you have fewer than 10 years of experience, one page will be best. For more experienced candidates, a two-page resume should be sufficient. 

Expert hint: Not sure where or how to put CPA on resumes? Add your title after your name in the resume header, e.g., John Smith, CPA. Add a separate section on your resume for certifications, too, and list details of your CPA license there. We’ll talk about making additional resume sections in the final chapter of this guide, so stick around for more information! 

2. Show Your Immediate Value With a CPA Resume Profile

Your resume profile statement is a short (2–4-sentence) overview of what you can offer the employer. Done right, it will catch the recruiter’s attention and show them straight away that you’re the ideal candidate for the role. 

Here’s how to structure yours: 

1. Start with an adjective that describes your work ethic (efficient, detail-oriented, accurate)
2. Add your job title (accountant, tax auditor, senior accountant) and years of experience (3+, 5+)—you can mention CPA in brackets, e.g., senior accountant (CPA) with 8+ years of experience
3. State what you can achieve for the new employer (eager to apply my expertise towards maintaining 100% accurate accounting records and efficient processes for XYZ Company)
4. Outline a couple of your most relevant, impressive professional accomplishments (maintained 100% error-free records, streamlined payroll processes by 5 hours per month, saved the company $5k/month in operational costs)

The resulting paragraph is what’s called a resume summary—a type of profile ideal for experienced candidates. 

Here’s a CPA resume summary example written according to the above formula: 

CPA Resume Examples: Summary Paragraph

Detail-oriented senior accountant (CPA) with 10+ years of experience and excellent process optimization and leadership skills. Seeking to apply my expertise towards creating and maintaining accurate, predictable, efficient accounting processes for Alt & Co. At Smith & Stone, saved $3k/month in operational costs, produced 50+ financial reports per year, and maintained 98% budgeting accuracy. Saved J&F Solutions 2 man-hours per month by synchronizing pay schedules. 

Short, to the point, and filled with relevant achievements and skills—all while addressing the company (Alt & Co.) directly to show that this summary was tailor-made. 

Here’s a not-so-good attempt at a summary, from the same candidate, for comparison: 

I’m an experienced CPA used to working in fast-paced environments with challenging projects and tight deadlines. Managed payroll, AR/AP, and financial reporting in the past; authored and implemented several in-house accounting policies. Seeking a stable position with regulated hours and the possibility of career advancement and skill development. Able to provide references from previous employers on request. 

This summary is all about the candidate and what they want from the company—which is precisely the wrong thing to focus on. It also lacks concrete information and fails to mention the name of the target employer, making it all too generic and ultimately redundant. 

You know what to do if you’re a CPA with a few years of experience. Let’s move on to how to start a resume if you’re not quite so far in your career just yet. If that sounds like you, then you’ll need to write a resume objective instead.

An objective paragraph follows the same basic outline as a summary (above) but focuses on transferable skills and experience, including academic achievements, if professional ones are unavailable. As a CPA you’re likely to have at least a year or two of professional experience, depending on your state, so you can easily rely on things you achieved during this time. 

Consider these objective examples: 

CPA Resume Samples: Objective Paragraph

Driven CPA with 2 years of bookkeeping experience, strong data analysis skills, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting (GPA 3.85). Eager to join Alt & Co. as a junior accountant to handle payroll, AR/AP, ledger reconciliation, and other duties with full accuracy and dedication. As a part-time bookkeeper at Smith & Stone, maintained a 100% error-free track record and digitized 25GB worth of documents within 8 months with no mistakes. 

Recent Accounting graduate with a valid CPA license, seeking an in-house accounting position with a reliable company. Characterized by strong attention to detail and determination to put my skills into practice in a full-time accounting role. Have previous experience in bookkeeping. 

Just as with the set of summary paragraphs, the correct example is all about what the candidate has to offer to the employer, backed up by concrete facts and numbers. The incorrect example frankly fails to convey any immediately useful information.

If you’re struggling with writing your profile, skip this section for now and return to it once you’re done with the rest of your resume. 

3. Earn More Credit With Tailored CPA Job Descriptions and Skills

No matter your job title or field of expertise, the unfortunate truth is that many of the other applicants will have similar work experience to yours. Specific jobs in accounting, after all, involve near-identical duties. 

But there’s good news too: you can stand out by targeting your resume to the job advertisement, and it’s easier than it sounds. 

The idea is to tailor your resume work experience section to make it reflect the employer’s requirements. In a way, you’re reconciling your offer with their expectations. 

Follow these steps to write a targeted job description: 

1. Review the job ad and identify specific skills it mentions. Those will be your resume keywords. 
2. Think about each keyword/skill and try to come up with examples of when you used it to achieve a specific outcome or impress supervisors. 
3. Turn those examples into bullet points that use numbers and active verbs for impact. 

Sample CPA Resume: Work Experience

Senior Accountant

Smith & Stone, Cincinnati, OH

October 2018–present

• Maintaining and balancing accounts by verifying and allocating transactions and resolving discrepancies.
• Establishing and implementing accounting policies and procedures, evaluating their performance, and making adjustments as necessary. 
• Producing 50+ financial reports per year for senior management, teams, and other stakeholders. 
• Advising management during budgeting and financial forecasting processes, achieving 98% forecast accuracy. 

Key achievement: 

• Saved $3,000 in monthly operational costs by automating parts of the payroll and bookkeeping processes with no loss in accuracy. 

That’s how you fill your resume with achievements rather than boring duties! By making this section all about your performance—rather than your responsibilities—you can easily stand out as a high-achiever who takes initiative and owns their actions. 

At the same time, you’ll avoid sounding like most other applicants ‘responsible for’ a series of generic tasks:

Senior Accountant

Smith & Stone, Cincinnati, OH

October 2018–present

• Responsible for balancing accounts, allocating transactions, resolving discrepancies, and creating and introducing new accounting policies where needed. 
• Writing reports for management, detailing the company’s financial performance. 
• Tasked with budgeting and forecasting assistance at regular intervals during the fiscal year and before major investments. 

Note that the candidate’s experience is basically the same across the two examples—it’s all in the way it’s described. 

Now, still on the topic of resume keywords—

Make sure to mention a few of them in your resume skills section, too. A reasonably high concentration of relevant vocabulary will make your resume more ATS-friendly:

ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) software is used by most medium and large companies to sort through incoming applications. Some ATS solutions measure the relevancy of a resume based on cross-checking for keywords—so it’s worth including them in every section. 

You should focus on the skills mentioned in the job ad, but in case you’re after a few more, here’s a list of skills to get you started: 

CPA Resume Skills

• GAAP
• Oracle
• Sap
• Workday
• Exact
• Aptean
• QuickBooks
• Xero
• FreshBooks
• Excel
• MS Office
• Google Suite
• Payroll
• Data analysis
• Forecasting
• Billing
• Financial reporting
• Tax forms
• Accounts payable
• Accounts receivable
• Regulatory filings
• Budgeting
• Time management skills
• Leadership skills
• Critical thinking skills
• Conceptual skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Asset management
• Attention to detail
• Accuracy
• Integrity
• Confidentiality policies
• Computer skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Communication skills

As a CPA, you may pursue a range of different career options—make sure that the skill set you include on your resume matches your role as closely as possible. Job-specific skills will be better than a generic list. 

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4. Report on Your Education

Your experience isn’t the only asset worth declaring. You should also list your education on your resume—and know how to make the most of it if it’s a recent acquisition. 

As an experienced CPA, you can stick to the essentials: the name of your highest degree, where you got it, and when. Employers will be much more interested in your work experience than your long-gone school years. 

If you’re writing an entry-level resume, though, your education is likely to be your biggest advantage. In this case, expand your education section with additional information that shows your relevant skills, such as your GPA (if it was 3.7 or higher), coursework you excelled at, or extracurricular activities. 

Here’s an example: 

CPA Candidate Resume: Education Section Example

B.Sc. in Accounting

University of Cincinnati, OH

September 2017–June 2021

• GPA: 3.85
• Relevant coursework: Business Strategy and Policy, Financial Management, Accounting Information Systems

Expert hint: Mentioning relevant coursework on your resume is a great way to work a few keywords into your application, especially in the absence of substantial work experience. 

5. Balance Your CPA Resume With Additional Sections

Time for a little diversification—

While every valid resume will have work experience and education sections, what follows depends on your individual experience and circumstances. Add a couple of additional sections to your resume, such as: 

• Certifications and licenses, including your CPA exam
• Foreign languages you can speak at any level
• Volunteering experience
• Memberships in professional associations
• Publications
• Conferences
• Awards
• Projects
• Other activities that add value to your application

You can also mention your interests on your resume, but that’s only a good idea if you stick to highly relevant activities. For example, a keen interest in cars will be relevant if you’re applying for an accounting job with a car dealership—but not if you’re going for a tech company. 

Here’s an example of a set of additional sections on a CPA resume: 

CPA Resume Template: Extra Sections

Certifications

• Excel Associate (Office 2019), Microsoft, 2020
• Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Ohio Board of Accountancy, 2016

Memberships

• Member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) since 2016
• Member of the Ohio Society of CPAs since 2016

Languages

• English—native
• Spanish—fluent

Well, it’s safe to forecast success for your CPA resume! Boost its chances by writing an accounting cover letter as well—

Not every employer explicitly asks for one, but most will definitely appreciate it. A cover letter is an opportunity to address the recruiter directly and explain what makes you a safe investment. 

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Key Points

Ready to close the books? Here’s a recap of how to write a successful CPA resume: 

• Format your document to follow resume best practices: one-inch margins, neat font, and clear sections. 
• Write a compelling resume profile statement that shows what you can offer the employer, not the other way around. 
• Build your work experience section around relevant skills from the job ad and achievement statements. 
• Complete your CPA resume with details of your education and other relevant activities. 
• Write a cover letter that outlines your suitability for the role. 

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions about writing your CPA resume, start a discussion in the comments section below. We’ll be sure to join in! 

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