Best Finance Director Resume Examples For 2026 (Samples + Writing Guide)

You’ve built your career working with numbers. As far as you’re concerned, data does the talking. So when you start writing your Finance Director resume, you may struggle to tell your story. After all, so much of your career is rooted in figures.

Ready for the good news?

A strong finance executive resume uses both words and numbers to convey your unique value. Words set the scene – while metrics quantify the impact. 

Wondering how to pull it all together? This guide gives you 7 steps for building a finance director resume that’s every bit as impressive as your career.

Above: The front page of a Finance Director’s resume. Notice the elevated, confident, but friendly design. Your eye instinctively recognises that this is a premium document.

Key Takeaways.

7 Must-Have Resume Sections For A Finance Director.

You don’t need to dress your Finance Director resume with cutesy quotes, boxes, a headshot or an old-school “career objective”.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, these sections detract from – not add to – your job application.

Stick to these 7 sections:

Above: Page 2 of a Finance Director’s resume. Notice how it presents the candidate’s most recent role first. Make sure yours does the same.

1. Use A Finance Director-Worthy Resume Template.

Have you heard of the “Halo Effect”?

It is our brain’s tendency to let our initial judgment of something color everything that follows.

Some resumes look cheap. Other resumes look premium.

If your resume looks clean, modern and high-quality, the reader’s brain automatically assumes that you must be competent and trustworthy.

That’s why design is so important. Especially the top part of Page 1. It’s the most consequential real estate of your Finance Director resume.

The Halo becomes even more negative if your resume looks “dense”.

A resume that’s overloaded with text creates a high cognitive load, while a clear, minimalist resume creates what psychologists call cognitive fluency.

Human brains interpret things that create high cognitive load as less trustworthy and less premium.

They overwhelm the reader with all of its information – all at once.

Well-designed resumes, in contrast, use generous amounts of white space to create a subtle visual hierarchy that guides the reader from one section to the next – in a specific order.

Above: Page 3 of a Vice-President’s resume. It contains Education and Earlier Career History sections, as well as spillover from the Professional Experience section.

Create A Strong Header That Sells Your Value.

Don’t mess around here. Start by including the three points of contact:

Next, write your headline.

Don’t make the mistake of creating a headline that makes you look like every other corporate Finance Director. This is your first opportunity to set yourself apart.

It must contain three parts:

Above: This Finance Director’s headline provides excellent context. It’s clear that Val isn’t a generic, jack-of-all-trades executive – she creates specific value for a specific type of business.

3. Write A Finance Director-Worthy Profile.

Your professional summary – also called your resume summary, career profile, or professional profile – lives at the top of your document.

Directly under your resume header. But that doesn’t mean you want to write it first.

Keep in mind that your job isn’t to pick achievements you’re most proud of.

It’s to showcase the ones that are most relevant to the position.

As you do, be specific.

While it’s tempting to use stiff language and buzzwords, challenge yourself to get as clear as possible about what you’ve done in your career. Back all your claims up with hard numbers.

For example, this sentence sucks –

But this one shines –

See the difference?

Additionally, forgo the standard resume advice to use third-person language and opt for first-person instead.

It feels less robotic and more like a real, human interaction.

Above: The profile of this Finance Director tells a clear career story – and offers tangible differentiators.

4. Highlight 3–4 Of Your Biggest Wins.

Don’t pack the bottom of your Page 1 with bland, generic phrases like “financial strategy” and “budgeting & forecasting”.

Doing this only dilutes the impact of your resume. And it makes you look like every candidate in the pile.

The more elegant – and powerful – approach is to replace the generic “Key Skills” with 3-4 “Key Assets”.

These should be your strongest, most commercially significant achievements – fleshed out in the best possible light.

When writing, weave the essential keywords (you’ll find them in the position description) into the text naturally.

Above: The Key Assets section is far more effective at selling you than a list of generic skills.

5. Unpack Your Finance Leadership Experience.

Your work history is the meat and potatoes of your resume.

Start by listing your previous employers, their locations, the years you worked there, and the job title you held in reverse chronological order (meaning your most recent job at the top) on your document.

As I briefly mentioned above, you must use the reverse-chronological resume format to present your leadership experience.

You want to showcase roles you’ve held in the last ~15 years. For most executives applying for a Finance Director role, this will translate to 3-4 roles.

Provide 4-6 responsibilities and achievements for each role. The more recent the role, the more detail you want to provide.

Do me a favour – don’t shoot yourself in the foot when writing achievements.

Lead each with an action verb (e.g., if you’re a Finance Director, you’ll probably say things like “Improved”, “Reduced”, “Lowered”) and back your claim up with measurable data.

Above: This Finance Director’s mandate, responsibilities and achievements are unambiguously clear.

6. Tidy Up Your Education Section.

Did you go to a fancy high school? A terrible high school?

Recruiters don’t care either way.

So, leave that off your Finance Director resume.

But do include your undergraduate and graduate degrees, if any. Especially if you’ve completed any business school courses (e.g., Transition To General Management).

For each entry, provide the following details:

If, for example, your first job out of school was a Photography Assistant, I’d probably leave that one off your Finance Director resume.

Above: Wrap up your Finance Director resume by listing your degrees and earlier roles. Also, let the reader know that references are available.

7. Write A Finance Director-Worthy Cover Letter.

99% of cover letters are mind-numbingly dull.

But I’m sure you already knew that. You’ve probably had a few land on your desk in the last month. And I’m willing to wager that you didn’t read any of them.

But the terrible standard of cover letters is not a problem. It’s your opportunity.

Let your competition do what they want. You will make a great impression on hiring committees and executive recruiters by writing the best cover letter possible.

This is how you do it:

5 More Executive Resume Examples.

I wrote a few more resume guides that you may be interested in:

How To Write A Chief Operations Officer Resume

How To Write A Chief Marketing Officer Resume

How To Write A Chief Information Officer Resume

How To Write A Chief Executive Officer Resume

How To Write An Executive Director Resume

I hope this Finance Director resume writing guide will help you secure your next leadership role faster.

Irene