Mutual Fund Financial Managers

To be eligible for top financial management positions—such as chief financial officer—you’ll need to have five to 10 years of experience in lower-level financial management positions of increasing responsibility. In addition to financial experience, financial managers also need skills in a wide range of complementary areas. “Today’s most effective CFOs are those that have a breadth of business experience in addition to finance—from operations management, to business development, to even information technology and human resources,” according to Changing Economy/Evolving CFO, a report from the finance and accounting staffing firm Accounting Principals.

There’s a lot more to a successful career as a financial manager than simply being good at math. Financial managers must have excellent analytical, critical-thinking, and strategic planning skills. More than half of the chief financial officers surveyed by the cloud corporate performance management company Adaptive Insights reported that their roles had expanded from number crunching to include strategic business analysis. Strong ethics, leadership ability, a detail-oriented personality, and excellent communication and interpersonal skills are other important traits. Staying abreast of changing technology (including the ability to use financial-related software and databases such as Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains, Oracle PeopleSoft, and SAP, as well as data management software such as Microsoft Excel) is also very important. “Keeping pace with changing technology” was the most-cited pressure facing accounting and finance departments, according to a survey of CFOs by Robert Half Management Resources.