Top 12 Junior Financial Analyst Skills to Put on Your Resume
Breaking into finance at the junior analyst level takes more than enthusiasm. You need tools, fluency, and judgment. A resume that shows real capability—both technical and analytical—puts you in the yes pile faster.
Junior Financial Analyst Skills
- Excel
- SQL
- Python
- Tableau
- Power BI
- Financial Modeling
- Bloomberg Terminal
- QuickBooks
- SAP
- VBA
- R
- Salesforce
1. Excel
Excel is Microsoft’s spreadsheet workhorse. Analysts lean on it for structuring data, modeling scenarios, building budgets, and shaping reports that actually get read.
Why It's Important
It’s the center of gravity for day-to-day analysis. Fast calculations, robust models, clean reporting. You move quicker, make fewer mistakes, and support better decisions.
How to Improve Excel Skills
Focus on speed, structure, and reliability.
Keyboard fluency: Commit common shortcuts to muscle memory. Navigation, selection, formatting, editing.
Advanced formulas: Master INDEX/XMATCH, SUMIFS, IFERROR, LET, LAMBDA, array formulas, and date/time logic.
Pivot everything: PivotTables and PivotCharts for quick summaries, drilling, and crisp visuals.
Power Query + Power Pivot: Clean, shape, and combine datasets; build models with relationships and measures (DAX) for repeatable analysis.
Data validation and error checks: Guardrails. Drop-downs, constraints, audit trails, and consistency checks.
Analysis ToolPak and scenario tools: Regression, descriptive stats, Goal Seek, Solver.
Visualization craft: Thoughtful charts, sparklines, conditional formatting. Tell the story without shouting.
Model hygiene: Clear labeling, consistent formatting, separated inputs/logic/outputs, version control.
These habits compound. Your models get faster, sturdier, easier to share.
How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume
2. SQL
SQL is the language of relational databases. You use it to pull, join, filter, and aggregate data at the source instead of drowning in exports.
Why It's Important
It unlocks the systems where finance data lives. Faster queries, cleaner datasets, fewer manual steps, better traceability.
How to Improve SQL Skills
Core queries: SELECT, WHERE, JOIN types, GROUP BY, HAVING. No fluff—just precision.
Window functions: ROW_NUMBER, LAG/LEAD, running totals, partitioned averages for time-series and cohort work.
CTEs and subqueries: Break complex logic into readable layers. Reuse, review, refine.
Data modeling basics: Normalize where it helps, understand keys and relationships, keep naming consistent.
Performance thinking: Index awareness, explain plans, selective filters, minimal wildcards.
Finance-shaped practice: Query transactions, revenue bridges, ARR/MRR, churn, working capital, and cohort metrics.
Consistency wins. Write queries, review them, then shave off milliseconds and complexity.
How to Display SQL Skills on Your Resume
3. Python
Python is a flexible language for analysis, automation, and building lightweight tools that supercharge finance workflows.
Why It's Important
You can clean data, run models, stitch APIs, and automate repetitive work. Fewer clicks, more insight, less drift.
How to Improve Python Skills
Pandas and NumPy: Dataframes, indexing, joins, groupby, reshaping, vectorized math. Time series handling for financial calendars.
Visualization: Matplotlib and Seaborn for clean charts. Plotly for interactive views when stakeholders want to poke around.
Finance tooling: Explore libraries like QuantLib for pricing and calendars; statsmodels for regression and forecasting; scikit-learn for basic ML.
Data access: Work with databases (SQLAlchemy), CSV/Parquet, and APIs. Note: packages like yfinance provide historical and delayed market data, not true real-time feeds.
Project discipline: Virtual environments, requirements files, tidy repo structure, docstrings, and tests.
Build mini-projects: Cash flow forecasts, KPI pipelines, factor screens, portfolio reports—ship small, iterate.
Small scripts that save an hour a week pay off for months.
How to Display Python Skills on Your Resume
4. Tableau
Tableau turns raw tables into dashboards people can grasp in seconds. Trends, outliers, and drivers jump out.
Why It's Important
Executives won’t read dense spreadsheets. They will engage with a clear visual story that updates on schedule.
How to Improve Tableau Skills
Design principles: Intentional use of color, labels, and hierarchy. Reduce chartjunk. Emphasize what matters.
Calculated fields and parameters: Build flexible metrics, toggles, and driver analyses without duplicating work.
Data modeling: Understand joins vs. relationships, level-of-detail (LOD) expressions, extract strategies, and data source governance.
Finance-centric dashboards: Revenue bridges, variance analysis (actual vs. budget vs. forecast), cohort views, working capital packs.
Performance tuning: Optimize data sources, limit heavy calculations, use extracts wisely, filter efficiently.
Feedback loops: Share drafts early, collect reactions, refine navigation and annotations.
Clarity beats cleverness. Every time.
How to Display Tableau Skills on Your Resume
5. Power BI
Power BI is Microsoft’s analytics and dashboard platform, tightly integrated with Excel, Power Query, and the wider Microsoft stack.
Why It's Important
It connects to many sources, transforms data reproducibly, and ships interactive reports your team can refresh and trust.
How to Improve Power BI Skills
Power Query (M): Build robust, stepwise data transformations you can audit and rerun without manual tweaks.
Data modeling: Star schemas, relationships, bidirectional filters (used sparingly), calculation groups where appropriate.
DAX mastery: Measures over calculated columns; time intelligence; filter context vs. row context; variables for readability.
Visual literacy: Use the right visuals, dynamic titles, bookmarks, and tooltips. Keep navigation obvious.
Governance: Dataset ownership, refresh schedules, sensitivity labels, and access controls.
Certification: Consider Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate (PL-300). Exploring Microsoft Fabric and the Analytics Engineer path (DP-600) is also timely.
Treat each report like a product. Version it, improve it, measure adoption.
How to Display Power BI Skills on Your Resume
6. Financial Modeling
Financial modeling builds a structured representation of how a business makes and spends money—past, present, possible futures.
Why It's Important
Forecasts guide hiring and spend. Scenarios test resilience. Valuation informs strategy. Models are the sandbox for better choices.
How to Improve Financial Modeling Skills
Statement fluency: Deeply understand drivers across income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow—and how they link.
Excel craftsmanship: Transparent formulas, consistent formats, clear separation of inputs/logic/outputs, and checks that fail loudly.
Standards: Adopt recognizable conventions (color-coding, naming, grouping). FAST/SMART-style discipline helps readability.
Scenarios and sensitivities: Inputs, toggles, data tables. Show ranges, not single points.
Real cases: Rebuild public-company models, reverse-engineer earnings bridges, practice forecasting revenue and working capital.
Feedback and review: Peer audits, version control, and documentation. Treat your model like code.
Good models are boring in the best way: predictable, traceable, and sturdy under pressure.
How to Display Financial Modeling Skills on Your Resume
7. Bloomberg Terminal
Bloomberg Terminal delivers real-time market data, news, analytics, and communication tools in one formidable package.
Why It's Important
When speed matters—price moves, announcements, cross-asset views—it’s the platform that gets you answers now.
How to Improve Bloomberg Terminal Skills
Shortcuts and navigation: Learn keyboard commands and function mnemonics. Less mousing, more momentum.
Custom workspace: Pin the monitors, functions, and views you lean on—by asset, sector, or workflow.
Excel add-in: Pull live fields into models with refreshable formulas. Great for watchlists and dashboards.
Function depth: Dig into EVTS, WEI, FA, GP, RV, SPLC, and industry-specific dashboards.
Community and learning: Use built-in messaging for insights; take Bloomberg’s tutorials and practice quizzes.
The goal isn’t knowing everything. It’s knowing what to use, fast.
How to Display Bloomberg Terminal Skills on Your Resume
8. QuickBooks
QuickBooks handles core accounting for many small and midsize businesses—transactions, payroll, expenses, reporting.
Why It's Important
It’s often the system of record. Clean data in QuickBooks means faster close, fewer reconciliations, tighter insights.
How to Improve QuickBooks Skills
Chart of accounts discipline: Clear naming, minimal sprawl, consistent mapping to reports.
Custom reports: Build management packs with the right filters, groups, and schedules.
Automations: Recurring invoices, bank rules, scheduled reports, and approval workflows where available.
App integrations: Connect expense tools, billing systems, and CRM to reduce manual entry.
Audit log and controls: Track changes, manage roles, and separate duties.
Data hygiene: Reconcile on cadence, close periods, archive old items, and document procedures.
Your objective: a ledger that doesn’t fight you during analysis.
How to Display QuickBooks Skills on Your Resume
9. SAP
SAP’s ERP suite consolidates finance, operations, and more into a single system, giving real-time views across the enterprise.
Why It's Important
For analysts, it means standardized data, controlled processes, and the ability to drill from summary to source without hopping tools.
How to Improve SAP Skills
Learn the finance modules: Focus on SAP S/4HANA Finance, including GL, AP/AR, Asset Accounting, and Controlling.
Reporting paths: Understand Fiori apps, CDS views, and how to get the right slices into your analysis layer.
Process fluency: Know the flow from purchase order to payment, order to cash, and how postings hit the statements.
Master data care: Company codes, cost centers, profit centers, and their governance. Clean master data is everything.
Hands-on practice: Sandboxes, sample postings, and reconciliation drills. Repetition cements the flows.
Certification and community: Consider a foundational SAP finance certification and learn from practitioner groups.
Once you see how transactions ripple through SAP, analysis becomes straightforward.
How to Display SAP Skills on Your Resume
10. VBA
VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) automates Excel. Repetitive steps vanish. Reports build themselves.
Why It's Important
Automation reduces manual risk and frees time for analysis. Custom functions and forms adapt Excel to your workflow.
How to Improve VBA Skills
Core language: Variables, loops, conditionals, procedures, and module organization.
Excel object model: Workbooks, worksheets, ranges, tables, charts. Target objects precisely.
Debugging discipline: Breakpoints, step-through, watches, error handling with informative messages.
Practical automations: Data cleaning, report assembly, distribution emails, and file operations.
User interfaces: Build simple userforms for inputs and controls when others will use your tools.
Modern note: For Excel on the web, explore Office Scripts as a companion to desktop VBA.
Start small—record a macro, inspect the code, then improve and generalize.
How to Display VBA Skills on Your Resume
11. R
R is built for statistics and visualization. In finance, it shines on time series, forecasting, and rigorous modeling.
Why It's Important
When you need robust methods, tidy pipelines, and publication-grade charts, R delivers.
How to Improve R Skills
Foundations: Data types, vectors, lists, data frames, and the tidyverse mindset.
Data wrangling: dplyr and data.table for joins, groups, reshaping, and fast operations on large tables.
Time series: xts, zoo, tsibble, and forecast/fable for decomposition, ARIMA, and seasonal nuance.
Visualization: ggplot2 for layered graphics; plotly or Shiny for interactivity when stakeholders want to explore.
Finance packages: quantmod, TTR, and PerformanceAnalytics for markets, indicators, and portfolio evaluation.
Reproducibility: Quarto/R Markdown reports, renv for dependency management, and scripts that run end to end.
Write once, rerun forever. That’s the power.
How to Display R Skills on Your Resume
12. Salesforce
Salesforce is a CRM platform that captures sales and customer activity. For finance, it’s a window into pipeline, revenue, and retention.
Why It's Important
Better pipeline visibility means sharper forecasts. Cleaner handoffs. More accurate revenue analytics.
How to Improve Salesforce Skills
Tailored dashboards: Build finance-friendly dashboards—bookings vs. billings, pipeline coverage, win rates, cohort revenue.
Automation with Flow: Replace manual updates with Flows for assignments, validations, and scheduled tasks. Process Builder is being phased out—lean into Flow.
Data quality: Required fields, validation rules, duplicate detection, and clear definitions for stages and products.
Integrations: Connect ERP/accounting (e.g., QuickBooks, NetSuite) and BI tools for end-to-end visibility.
Analytics: Use Salesforce reports and, where available, advanced analytics to slice by segment, product, and rep for trend analysis.
Collaboration: Work with Sales Ops and RevOps to align definitions and cadence. Shared truth beats spreadsheet silos.
When CRM and finance speak the same language, forecasts stop wobbling.
How to Display Salesforce Skills on Your Resume
