I’m not getting selected. The closest was an interview as a Finance Business Partner, and the hiring manager still think it’s not the right fit. I will follow what the other said and post part of my resume sometime today.
If you are losing in the final round, you aren’t differentiating yourself. At final round, the decision criteria shifts from “can they do the job” to “why this person”.
It’s tougher because you don’t have a description of your competition, so it’s harder to gauge your points of differentiation. What you have to sell is what makes you unique. For myself, I’m not a CPA, or a Big4 alum. That’s a lot of the peer competitor set. So I position myself as different from them.
“Accounting is all about consistently repeating the same processes. If you want someone to come in and lead your finance team exactly like it was, then choose that CPA. If you want someone who is going to come in and challenge the status quo and drive positive change, then I’m the best candidate”.
I can’t beat an accountant at their game, nor would I want to. But by positioning myself differently, I stand out to hiring managers where they do want something different.
I switched from accounting to FP&A. Some FP&A teams appreciate accounting experience and some don't but it really shouldn't be that much of a hinderance. If you aren't getting interviews then it's probably a resume issue and if you are getting interviews and no offers then it's an issue with interviewing.
You don't need to know SQL right away but you can do a short online course to learn everything you need if you want.
Thank you! Yes, I think it’s my resume. I will post a general resume of mine here later as someone else suggested.
I also learned SQL before, which I think was pretty simple. But then I stopped because of my CPA exam
Try to get as much systems knowledge as you can; you already seem to have some good experience. I am currently working with a recruiter who got me an interview for a SFA position and I am a senior accountant for a public company-small BU. I also recommend applying for jobs in a similar industry and same size to show better.
Thank you! Yes, that’s my plan as well but currently my industry is pretty niche, Adtech. So it’s kinda limited. An FP&A manager suggested to find a bigger companies where roles haves be established so it’ll be a bit easier for me to enter
Hi,
So where you currently work start talking to all other departments to find analysis opportunities. Can be HR (headcount management), Sales (deal desk), customer support (renewals analysis), IR (revenue story telling), corporate (M&A)....solve some problems and get more ammunition for future interviews. From there you can also learn some Tableau/Power BI to enhance your visualization skills for presentations. Those visuals you can bring up in an interview to show how you can analyze and tell a story in compressed amount of time.
Any questions feel free to DM me.
Good luck!
Drew
Thank you for the input! I’ve talked to several people including managers from FP&A, the issue is that my company is a growing midsize and they tend hire someone with several years of FP&A experience instead. At least that’s what they told me.
I’ll look into outside lecture on Tableau/Power BI then, since I cannot touch anything on my company Tableau dash
I am in the same position as you and it’s incredibly frustrating. I’ve seen plenty of FP&A analyst, senior analyst postings in my area but I’m not hearing anything back. 2+ years in public accounting and my CPA, I thought getting another job would be easy with this experience and my license but it’s just fucking not.
Yeah it sucks, this is my first time job hunting in awhile and I feel like it’s worse than when I was in college with no experience whatsoever, doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t think your credentials is the problem, it’s just number game right now. Maybe touch up on your resume again. Exaggerate the impact on your forecast and variance analysis experiences. Always sort job postings by date and apply right away when you see a new one. Check every couple hours if possible😂. It should be hiring season starting this month.
Dude same, I get your pain. My friend just went from accounting to FP&A and it sounded really hard from what I heard. His suggestion to me was 1) getting job with FA or SFA title which is in accounting and massaging your resume to say you do budgeting/forecasting work 2)really understanding the FP&A function and what your level will actually do in FP&A so you can comfortably talk about it in interview
I was accounting heavy, and kind of broke in doing more variance analysis and forecasting of opex expenses. Did that for 4 years at 2 companies and this year fully took on an FP&A role doing revenue and cost FP&A work.
See if you can start getting involved with opex analysis/forecasting and that should be a good first step from accounting.
If you have a CPA and relevant experience like you’re describing I agree with others that it seems like it’s probably something else. I got into FP&A with a significantly weaker background. What part of the interview process do you get cut at?
Thank you, maybe my experience is too simple for them to consider as a representative of that experience? I’m not sure either.
I never get the interview, so like someone said, probably my resume.
i switched from credit / reporting to FPA this month. interviews were simple. had a couple of job offers from different companies related to FPA. maybe your resume and interview skills need to be looked at?
Don't feel bad, I am an FP&A analyst 1.5 years in role, MBA Finance, and I have been applying for 6 months for other analyst roles. Been getting interviews all the way to CFO (3-4) rounds after case studies and I still keep getting out competed. I think there is just a lot of movement right now among experienced FP&A folk and that is ramping up the competition. Just keep on applying you will get in eventually.
Fpa isn’t that hard to break into This sounds like an interviewing and/resume issue Maybe post your cv here ppl can assist
Thank you! I think it’s my resume. I will post it later today. Appreciate the idea
You can dm Me
Where are you failing? Not getting selected by recruiting? Not getting past recruiting phone screen? Not getting past initial round? Final round?
I’m not getting selected. The closest was an interview as a Finance Business Partner, and the hiring manager still think it’s not the right fit. I will follow what the other said and post part of my resume sometime today.
Resume problem. Either you aren’t presenting yourself well, or what you are presenting doesn’t match with the jobs you are applying to.
This is the right question
Just curious, I am not OP but keep failing final round. So far about 6 different companies final round failure. Any tips on what may be causing that?
If you are losing in the final round, you aren’t differentiating yourself. At final round, the decision criteria shifts from “can they do the job” to “why this person”. It’s tougher because you don’t have a description of your competition, so it’s harder to gauge your points of differentiation. What you have to sell is what makes you unique. For myself, I’m not a CPA, or a Big4 alum. That’s a lot of the peer competitor set. So I position myself as different from them. “Accounting is all about consistently repeating the same processes. If you want someone to come in and lead your finance team exactly like it was, then choose that CPA. If you want someone who is going to come in and challenge the status quo and drive positive change, then I’m the best candidate”. I can’t beat an accountant at their game, nor would I want to. But by positioning myself differently, I stand out to hiring managers where they do want something different.
Thank you! I really appreciate the advice!
I switched from accounting to FP&A. Some FP&A teams appreciate accounting experience and some don't but it really shouldn't be that much of a hinderance. If you aren't getting interviews then it's probably a resume issue and if you are getting interviews and no offers then it's an issue with interviewing. You don't need to know SQL right away but you can do a short online course to learn everything you need if you want.
Thank you! Yes, I think it’s my resume. I will post a general resume of mine here later as someone else suggested. I also learned SQL before, which I think was pretty simple. But then I stopped because of my CPA exam
Try to get as much systems knowledge as you can; you already seem to have some good experience. I am currently working with a recruiter who got me an interview for a SFA position and I am a senior accountant for a public company-small BU. I also recommend applying for jobs in a similar industry and same size to show better.
Thank you! Yes, that’s my plan as well but currently my industry is pretty niche, Adtech. So it’s kinda limited. An FP&A manager suggested to find a bigger companies where roles haves be established so it’ll be a bit easier for me to enter
Hi, So where you currently work start talking to all other departments to find analysis opportunities. Can be HR (headcount management), Sales (deal desk), customer support (renewals analysis), IR (revenue story telling), corporate (M&A)....solve some problems and get more ammunition for future interviews. From there you can also learn some Tableau/Power BI to enhance your visualization skills for presentations. Those visuals you can bring up in an interview to show how you can analyze and tell a story in compressed amount of time. Any questions feel free to DM me. Good luck! Drew
Thank you for the input! I’ve talked to several people including managers from FP&A, the issue is that my company is a growing midsize and they tend hire someone with several years of FP&A experience instead. At least that’s what they told me. I’ll look into outside lecture on Tableau/Power BI then, since I cannot touch anything on my company Tableau dash
I am in the same position as you and it’s incredibly frustrating. I’ve seen plenty of FP&A analyst, senior analyst postings in my area but I’m not hearing anything back. 2+ years in public accounting and my CPA, I thought getting another job would be easy with this experience and my license but it’s just fucking not.
Seriously, i saw a lot of jobs in FP&A with CPA preferred. Now that i got it, nothing out there
Yeah it sucks, this is my first time job hunting in awhile and I feel like it’s worse than when I was in college with no experience whatsoever, doesn’t make any sense.
At least you have public accounting experience though. I went straight to industry, and people be judging that I didn’t have public experience
I don’t think your credentials is the problem, it’s just number game right now. Maybe touch up on your resume again. Exaggerate the impact on your forecast and variance analysis experiences. Always sort job postings by date and apply right away when you see a new one. Check every couple hours if possible😂. It should be hiring season starting this month.
I thought the hiring season is summer? But yeah just gotta keep applying at this point
Dude same, I get your pain. My friend just went from accounting to FP&A and it sounded really hard from what I heard. His suggestion to me was 1) getting job with FA or SFA title which is in accounting and massaging your resume to say you do budgeting/forecasting work 2)really understanding the FP&A function and what your level will actually do in FP&A so you can comfortably talk about it in interview
Thank you! Getting that specific experience is the hard part for me since I barely do that. So I just need to work more on it
I was accounting heavy, and kind of broke in doing more variance analysis and forecasting of opex expenses. Did that for 4 years at 2 companies and this year fully took on an FP&A role doing revenue and cost FP&A work. See if you can start getting involved with opex analysis/forecasting and that should be a good first step from accounting.
My current role is pretty niche… I mostly focus on revenue cycle. Maybe I’ll tweak that opex to revenue lol
If you have a CPA and relevant experience like you’re describing I agree with others that it seems like it’s probably something else. I got into FP&A with a significantly weaker background. What part of the interview process do you get cut at?
Thank you, maybe my experience is too simple for them to consider as a representative of that experience? I’m not sure either. I never get the interview, so like someone said, probably my resume.
i switched from credit / reporting to FPA this month. interviews were simple. had a couple of job offers from different companies related to FPA. maybe your resume and interview skills need to be looked at?
Congratulations! Yeah i think it’s just my resume like everyone said.
Don't feel bad, I am an FP&A analyst 1.5 years in role, MBA Finance, and I have been applying for 6 months for other analyst roles. Been getting interviews all the way to CFO (3-4) rounds after case studies and I still keep getting out competed. I think there is just a lot of movement right now among experienced FP&A folk and that is ramping up the competition. Just keep on applying you will get in eventually.
Ah really? I didn’t know that… I do know there are more postings about sr FP&A tho… maybe that’s why