There’s a disconnect in the financial hiring space right now. 92% of companies can’t find the finance talent they need, roles stay empty for six to eight weeks on average, and businesses feel the effects. Yet, employers are overlooking many perfectly able candidates.
Countless financial professionals send in applications for jobs or apply for promotions only to be met with silence, even when their experience, qualifications, and traits match the business’s needs. The problem? Those candidates are focusing on the wrong things.
They’re still trying to show their value with qualifications and time spent in the field, while employers are looking for something else: evidence.
Today’s business leaders are hiring for results. They don’t want to know what you did in the past; they want to know what happened in a business because of you.
It doesn’t have to be dramatic. Not everything needs to be tied to a million-pound turnaround. But it does need to be clear.
- What was improved?
- What was saved?
- What was caught early, delivered faster, or built out more accurately than before?
That’s what people mean when they talk about quantifying your achievements. It’s not about self-promotion. It’s about giving someone else the ability to understand your value without having to guess at it.
The Quantification Imperative in Finance
Most people in finance already think in numbers. That part isn’t the issue.
It’s easy to track quarterly margins, report variances, and model next year’s revenue. The work itself is full of measurable outcomes. What’s harder for candidates is turning the lens inward and asking, “What changed because of me?”
That’s what today’s finance employers want to hear about, now more than ever. They can’t afford to invest in potential; they want proof.
The challenge is that most resumes, especially in finance, still read like job descriptions. They have bullet points that say, “Prepared monthly reports” or “Led cost analysis for procurement.” Those tasks may be important and require real skill and time, but without a result attached, they leave too much up to interpretation.
Now consider what happens when someone writes, “streamlined reporting process, reducing monthly close from 12 to 7 days,” or “identified $240K in excess vendor charges through quarterly analysis.”
That same hiring manager can suddenly see what was done, how it helped, and roughly what kind of scope the work involved. It makes their job easier, which is important when teams are in a rush.
A lot of people reviewing applications are doing it quickly. Ten, maybe fifteen seconds per document before they move on. If the line says, “reduced overdue receivables by 19% over two quarters,” that number becomes an anchor. It helps them recall the rest of your profile later.
The data backs this up. 34% of recruiters say a lack of clear results in a resume is a dealbreaker. Sharing quantifiable results makes your CV feel more complete and makes it easier to convince recruiters and HR teams that you’re worth interviewing.
Essential Finance Metrics That Matter to Employers
In finance, most of what you do is measurable, but not always in a way that gets talked about.
Someone keeps an important deal on track, then catches the forecast error before it rolls up. Someone else spots the pattern in ageing receivables early enough to prevent a write-off. These aren’t always seen as big moments, but they matter and are traceable.
If you can quantify those achievements and share the metrics that matter, you’re far more likely to win over a hiring manager. So, which numbers should you be tracking?
Financial Performance Metrics
These are usually the easiest to explain and monitor. You can track:
- Gross margin
- Net profit
- Revenue growth
- Cost savings
If your work contributed to any of those, directly or indirectly, you could draw attention to it. Explain what happened. Maybe you identified unnecessary spending. Maybe your reporting helped the sales team course-correct. Maybe your forecast let leadership spot a gap before it widened. Even if you weren’t the decision-maker, you were part of the mechanism that made the result possible.
Operational Metrics:
Evidence of operational excellence is often harder to quantify, but not impossible. You can keep a close eye on things like:
- Close cycle time
- Forecast variance
- Reconciliation speed
- Error reduction
- Number of reports automated
These metrics show potential employers how you can contribute to the team’s and the company’s overall performance.
Strategic or cross-functional outcomes
Sometimes, your achievements won’t be tied to your direct responsibilities. For instance:
- Did you help prepare for a board meeting?
- Did your analysis lead to a decision that paid off?
- Did you give someone the visibility they didn’t have before?
If so, think about the result. Maybe your budget pack became the go-to version because it was the cleanest. Maybe your variance notes helped the CFO resist a vendor escalation.
You’re not trying to tell someone everything you did. You’re just helping them see what kind of difference you can make.
The Quantification Framework – From Activities to Achievements
For many people, the hard part isn’t knowing whether they’ve done valuable work. It’s figuring out how to talk about it in an application, a screening call, or a panel interview.
That’s where a simple framework can help, giving you direction on how to shape the story.
Here’s one version that tends to work well: the IMPACT approach. It’s nothing complicated; it’s just a way to connect your day-to-day work with the results it creates.
- I – Identify the baseline: what was happening before
- M – Measure the action you took, what you did, and how
- P – Pinpoint the result: what improved
- A – Articulate the value: why it mattered
- C – Contextualise the achievement: compared to what?
- T – Time-bound it: when or how fast did this happen?
A structure like this helps transform generic statements into meaningful stories. Instead of “managed budgets”, you say you “optimised developmental budgets, achieving 98% accuracy rates, and reducing variance by 15% year over year”.
Sometimes, to build these stories, you need to do your research. That could mean going back and pulling old reports. Checking last year’s numbers. Looking through emails or board decks. Not to create a perfect case study, but to ground your story in something true.
If it helps, keep a log. Just a simple note: every time you get a great result, maybe you get praise for a report, a timeline improved, or helped shape an important decision.
You don’t need big results to make this work. You need honesty and willingness to speak plainly about what they mean.
CV and Interview Quantification Strategies
Many finance professionals still struggle with the two biggest parts of the job application process: writing the CV and cover letter and navigating the interview.
You know what you did. You remember the work: the meetings, deadlines, things that got built, fixed, or delivered. But turning that into a sentence that doesn’t sound like bragging can be complicated. Most people start with responsibilities: what they managed, oversaw, or supported.
That’s not wrong. But it doesn’t tell anyone what happened because of you. It just tells them you were there. A hiring manager already knows that much. What they’re trying to figure out is what changed while you were.
The thing that usually helps is being specific.
Instead of saying: “Supported monthly reporting process”
You might say: “Cleaned and prepared reporting data across two business units, reducing manual fixes and cutting distribution time from four days to two.”
Add 2 or 3 quantified achievements to every role or position you want to discuss. The same thing applies in interviews. When someone asks, “Tell me about a time you improved a process”, pause. Think of the project where you did just that, then respond using the STAR method: Situation, task, action, and results.
It helps to be prepared, too. Prepare specific examples you can refer to when you reference financial metrics, people metrics, or performance results. Please keep them in a mental log you can pull from anywhere.
Building Your Professional Impact Portfolio
CVs are still important, but they’re often skimmed. Conversations are remembered, if they go well – but only for a certain time. Sometimes, especially when you’re applying for a competitive or senior role, it helps to have something you can leave behind: a portfolio.
It doesn’t need to be complicated. There is no need for a glossy binder or a fancy site unless you want one. Most of the time, it’s just a collection of real things—projects, reports, screenshots, maybe a dashboard or two—that help show the shape of your work.
What’s useful:
- A short description of the project or task
- What problem was it trying to solve
- What was your role?
- What changed because of it
If you’re applying for jobs, a simple PDF works well. Some people keep a Notion page or Google Drive folder and share a link. If you’re prepping for a promotion, it can be something you talk through, one example at a time, as part of a larger story.
The most important thing you can do is keep this resource current. Track emerging metrics relevant to evolving finance roles and add them to your portfolio. Show how your responsibilities and achievements have progressed by adding new performance reviews, client testimonials, and statistics.
Tracking tools can help by giving you a digital system you can add to regularly. If you’re in a larger team or organisation, you might already have access to something like:
- Fathom or Planful for financial performance analysis
- Power BI or Tableau dashboards tied to your KPIs
- Jira or Asana for project milestones and team contributions
These aren’t resume tools. They’re not designed for storytelling. But they do give you access to the data that supports the story. The dates, metrics, and sequence. Sometimes, pulling the right report or screenshot can help you rebuild a moment you forgot.
From Qualified to Quantifiable Success
Nothing unusual about being good at your job and not knowing how to talk about it. That happens more often than people admit. You might constantly do the work, meet deadlines, and keep employers happy. But when someone asks, “What impact did you make? “the answer gets blurry, because you never made the right notes.
In finance, most of the value you’ll deliver is measurable. But that doesn’t mean it always gets measured, or remembered, especially when the focus is on moving things forward, not looking back.
Quantifying your work isn’t about proving yourself. It’s about building a habit of noticing. Paying attention to the small ways things improve because you were part of them.
Small wins, repeated over time, become your track record. When you share that story, with even a little structure and context, you make it easier for someone else to understand the difference you make.
This isn’t about turning your CV or application into a pitch or case study. It’s about
It’s about making your work visible. So the next time you step into a conversation about what you’ve done and what you’re ready for, you don’t have to start from scratch.
You already have the numbers. You need to bring them with you.
Thanks,
Rachel
About Rebus Financial Recruitment
Rebus Financial Recruitment provides a specialist and focused recruitment service to its customers, ranging from various organisations, including SMEs, to large PLCs.
We strive to offer both the client and candidate a seamless recruitment experience. Using our expertise, we understand employer and employee needs and match them perfectly.
To learn more, contact one of our team members today or call us at 01282 930930.
