{"id":65975,"date":"2024-09-27T07:07:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T14:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=65975"},"modified":"2024-11-20T16:10:08","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T05:10:08","slug":"soft-skills-finance-accounting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/au\/blog\/soft-skills-finance-accounting\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Essential Soft Skills for a Successful Career in Finance or Accounting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Finance and accounting professionals perform tasks that are often complex, demanding, and incredibly consequential to the success of their company. As such, they rely on many technical skills gathered through years of experience and education. But, mathematical skills and role-specific expertise are just a piece of the puzzle \u2013 success in finance or accounting also requires a number of equally important soft skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below, we\u2019ll cover eight valuable soft skills and explain why these attributes are instrumental to success in the finance and accounting fields. If you want to get ahead in your career, these are the attributes you should actively work on improving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or, if you\u2019re hiring for a new finance or accounting position, our tips will be just as useful \u2013 as these are the skills you should be looking for in any job candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Soft skills vs. hard skills<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For those who may be new to the workforce, we want to take a minute to distinguish the difference between hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are job-specific duties required of a role. These are often technical, measurable, and objective. Hard skills can be taught or learned through training. Examples of hard skills include copywriting, data analysis, project management, and computer programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soft skills, on the other hand, aren\u2019t job specific. They\u2019re more subjective, but equally important skills that make someone a valuable asset in any role they may take on. Some soft skills include: communication, collaboration, leadership, and problem-solving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither skill set is more or less important than the other. In fact, the ideal employee possesses an equal mix of both soft skills and hard skills. But, in professions like finance or accounting, where the focus is often on the more technical aspects of the role, it can be easy to overlook the importance of soft skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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8 essential soft skills for finance professionals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Whether you\u2019re a hiring manager looking for your next candidate or a finance professional looking to develop your skill set, remember to keep these eight finance soft skills in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Communication<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Communication skills are in high demand across all industries, but are especially essential for finance workers. You may be a technical wizard, highly trained in all kinds of billing and cash flow analysis activities, but the results you produce are only as good as your ability to communicate them to key stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, say you\u2019ve just released your monthly commission statements to your sales team. You\u2019ve already taken every measure to calculate their commission in the most efficient, accurate manner possible. But, a sales rep has a question about their statement, as they believed they were set to earn more than the statement indicates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you approach compensation communication<\/a> with clarity and precision, you\u2019ll be able to quickly explain the numbers to this sales rep, thus earning their trust and cultivating a strong interpersonal relationship, while also alleviating their confusion. On the other hand, if you come off as dismissive, unconfident, or hard to understand, you\u2019ll only exacerbate their concerns and these problems are likely to reoccur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same logic applies to good communication with senior leadership \u2013 if you can present your analysis and ideas confidently and concisely, you\u2019ll be able to earn their support and influence their decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of communication in finance as an act of translation: you must be able to convert intricate technical concepts and hard data into clear, digestible information that peers and stakeholders can trust and understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Attention to detail<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The work you do as a finance or accounting professional is both highly impactful and highly sensitive. After all, you\u2019re dealing with money, whether you\u2019re managing budgets, calculating payroll, fulfilling an invoice, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why attention to detail is so critical to your performance. Any error or oversight won\u2019t go unnoticed, whether it\u2019s a small issue, like a negligible typo in a budgetary document, or a major mistake, like a miscalculation in an earnings statement. Keen attention to detail will go a long way in preventing these issues and producing work that is efficient and accurate rather than rushed and error-prone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Organisation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s incredibly difficult to succeed in finance and accounting without organisational skills. When working on any given project, you might need to manage large amounts of financial data, while adhering to strict deadlines and ensuring both accuracy and compliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a lot of critical factors to consider \u2013 and too much for an unorganised worker to handle. If you don\u2019t create and adhere to a hyper-structured process, you\u2019ll either be scrambling and rushing through tasks, which makes you prone to error, or you\u2019ll become bogged down by inefficiencies and struggle to meet deadlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best financial workers are always interrogating their own process, seeking to identify areas where they\u2019re unnecessarily wasting time, risking accuracy, or misusing resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Digital dexterity<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This next finance skill once again speaks to the dynamic nature of the financial industry. Companies adopt new finance solutions frequently, either replacing legacy software or filling a need with an entirely new solution. So, while you may possess hard skills in terms of proficiency with specific tools, you must also cultivate the soft skill of adaptability \u2013 or more specifically, digital dexterity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital dexterity refers to your ability to quickly pivot to new and potentially unfamiliar technologies. You might be a master of a budgeting software your company adopted years ago, but what happens if they decide to switch to a different solution? Adaptable employees step up in these scenarios, learning the ins and outs of the new technology and helping others become proficient as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In finance and accounting, being digitally dexterous means that the value you bring to the table isn\u2019t contingent on one specific tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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