1. Financial Acumen. Regardless of your experience, what specifically do you know and understand about financial matters? A solid understanding of how an organization operates as reflected in its P&L (profit and loss statement) is a starting place. You don’t need to be an accountant to understand a basic P&L, although a course or two in accounting is a definite plus for any job seeker. In its simplest form (at the right), a P&L consists of:

• Revenue, which includes all the sources of income,
• Expenses, which includes all types of expenditures, and
• Profit is what is left over. “Loss” is a negative profit.

Employers make most of their decisions based on anticipated financial outcomes that either yield a profit or at worst, no profit but no loss either.

You’ll want to learn the important financial terms of your field of career interest and determine how you can use these terms to accurately describe your accomplishments. Which of your accomplishments can you quantify in terms of revenues and/or profits, and how you positively impacted either or both?

2. Saving Expenses. Much of what we do as part of everyday living have to do with saving expenses. We choose the less expensive generic brand over the brand name after comparing ingredients and noting no differences, or we stick with the old one a bit longer rather than buy the new one. Employers are heavily focused on ways to save money, so they will gravitate towards candidates who have a history of disciplined expense savings. Consider how your actions for past employers, volunteer organizations, or personal uses have resulted in the savings of expenses. Here are a few examples:

• There were actual dollar savings by comparison shopping for the same items.
• You increased the life of a purchase, resulting in more usefulness over the life of the item, which saved expenses.
• You found ways to subsidize the cost of an item, resulting in saved expenses.

3. Managing a Budget. You’ve likely been doing this ever since you made decisions about what to do with the $20 you received as a gift on your birthday. Figuring out which decisions are good ones and bad ones, then having the discipline to make sure your income always exceeded your expenses means that you’ve managed a budget. Someone who earns $30,000 per year will manage a million-dollar budget over their lifetime. Employers want to see what type of budget you managed for current and past employers, volunteer organizations and for personal use (if applicable…think of a stay-at-home parent managing a household). What specific accomplishments can you point to that would tell an employer that you have managed a budget?