Accounting firms receive thousands of applications each year, both during the recruiting season and otherwise. Your resume is an opportunity to market yourself. Recruiters are not expecting you to have a lot of work experience, but you should point out the skills that are important to accountants. This includes articulating your interest in analyzing financial information, working in teams, and utilizing spreadsheet skills. Accounting recruiters look for the following on resumes: •Interest in financial analysis: Accountants spend a lot of time looking at numbers. Demonstrate your passion for numbers! Include, for example, details about your role as treasurer for an organization or your participation in a stock market challenge. •Evidence of academic strength. Some firms insist on this information and even set GPA/board score cutoff points when screening applicants. • Team player characteristics. Accountants spend a lot of time working within large teams and diverse clients, it is essential that you demonstrate your ability to be a team player and exhibit an ability to work with diverse groups of people. • Propensity for leadership, confidence, and maturity. Accounting firms want hire auditors and tax staff with the idea that they can become managers or even partners. Accounting firms want to work with employees who already demonstrate leadership ability. Be sure to provide evidence of organizational situations or roles where you have exhibited leadership and maturity. • Accomplishments. Firms seek people who boast accomplishments that demonstrate reliability, tenacity, commitment, motivation, and high standards of excellence. • Distinctions. You’ve got lots of competition. However, if you can differentiate yourself on your resume – highlighting technical skills, foreign languages, publications, awards, leadership and/or involvement in campus activities – it will be to your advantage. • Communication Skills - Accountants often need to discuss issues with clients or present information in a prepared and professional mannner. Exhibit your ability to communicate organizationally and persuasively. Evidence of this skill can be drawn from activities like giving a speech to a student organization on campus, leading a class presentation, or participating in meetings with campus leadership. •Client skills. Accounting is a client business. Accountants must work well with clients. Evidence of your client service skills might include a service-oriented job, like a part-time technical support position or a community service position. Highlight customer service whenever possible! Other Important Points: • Wherever possible, quantify your results to make your achievements more concrete and tangible. • Be aware that how you write and structure your resume says a lot about how you communicate with others. • Make your resume as concise as possible. Interview Process Accounting firms enter the interview process looking for specific characteristics and abilities in a candidate. It is important to spend ample time preparing so you can demonstrate these traits during the interview. Prior to the interview: •Research the opportunities, as well as the strengths of each firm. •Become familiar with current issues and trends within the accounting industry. •Review accounting fundamentals that may be addressed as questions. • Participate in mock interviews offered through the William & Mary Career Center. •Leverage the resources of the Career Counselors in the William & Mary Career Center. •Review sample interview questions (see examples in the next section). During the interview: •Exhibit a high energy, self-confident, outgoing personality by looking the interviewer in the eyes, shaking hands firmly, and sitting up straight. •Discuss your ability to handle conflict and work through stressful situations. •Clearly express your goals to demonstrate your sense of direction and focus. •Exhibit an ability to communicate effectively, both organizationally and persuasively. •Provide examples that demonstrate your initiative to be a self-starter and a leader. •Always accept responsibility for your actions, faults, mistakes, or even bad grades. The Interview Accounting is known for requiring candidates to respond to a multitude of diverse questions. These include commitment questions, maturity questions, motivation questions, communication skills questions, and technical questions. Each type of question has its own way of providing interviewers with specific information about the candidate. Samples of each are listed below: