How to Write a Credit Controller CV / Credit Control CV

A large amount of high value financial transactions are conducted via credit these days. This has become prevalent to the extent that many large companies and organisations are hiring Credit Controllers in the finance department. Their sole purpose is to set up and arrange credit arrangements, while undertaking all the associated liaison and administration. Their ultimate goal is to ensure that the employer's financial interests are protected, while enabling the benefits offered by credit arrangements to benefit the business.

Your application for the role of Credit Controller needs to demonstrate your combination of customer service skills, financial acumen and strength of character. In highlighting this balance of experience, knowledge and personal attributes, you need to leave the employer in little doubt that you are worth inviting to interview.

You should be able to offer a solid grounding in account management, while showing the ability to manage these processes within the broader finance team. This means that you need to convey a rather unusual mix of attributes. As much as any other person in the organisation, the Credit Controller is able to expose the organisation to financial risk, so appoints are particularly sensitive.

It can be tough trying to produce your own CV, a professional CV writing company can really help. Bradley CVs has extensive experience in writing credit controller CVs.

What Should You Include on Your Credit Controller CV?

The Credit Controller frequently has the responsibility of developing and implementing a credit control system for a business or group. They may be called upon to review an existing system in light of economic change or changes in the fortunes of the company - this all needs to be document on your Credit Controller CV. Your role may also include some or all of the following:

• Overseeing credit control procedures for the employer, introducing improvements or changes as necessary.
• Establishing and monitoring company and individual customer credit limits.
• Managing the finance due on sales and contacting customers to ensure that balances do not become overdue.
• Securing outstanding debts by starting proceedings against non-paying customers.
• Contributing to the implementation of payment systems, such as Direct Debit systems.
• Reporting on credit and debt status, as well as credit management processes, to senior managers within the organisation.

What Characteristics do You Need to Show on Your Credit Controller CV?

People being appointed to Credit Controller positions usually need to have experience in this area within a similar type or size of organisation. Accounts department and customer service experience is also valued.

Make sure that you clearly list the type of experience you have in your Credit Controller CV.

Customer service skills require an ease with talking to people, especially about a sometimes difficult subject such as ability to settle bills.

If face-to-face contact is required, good self-presentation and a friendly personality are required. Discretion and the ability to treat information in confidence are needed, being understanding yet firm.

Given that some of the work may be difficult, dealing with overdue account holders, a degree of resilience is needed. The ability to work consistently under sometimes stressful situations is necessary. Computer literacy is usually a requirement as well as strong communication skills.

It is important that the person is a confident decision maker, as they will have to rely on their judgement when ascertaining ability to pay and credit levels offered. Analytical thinking abilities are vital, as, obviously, is mathematical proficiency. As in all financial or accounting roles, post-holders need to display efficiency to detail, flexibility to deal with changing workloads, motivation and commitment, with enough dedication to do the ongoing routine tasks as well.

What are an Employer's Concerns for a Credit Control CV?

In a Credit Controller CV, an employer wants to see financial analysis combined with the ability to make accurate projections over future sales income. Their key concerns for a Credit Control CV can be reduced to:

• Can this person guarantee that sales development will be supported by beneficial credit arrangements?
• Can they assist the organisation in maximising profits by improving our credit policy?
• How quickly can they establish themselves and make a difference?
• Is this person totally dependable and will this be a risk-free - or minimal risk - appointment?

The employer's concern about risk is twofold - the risk they take in offering credit to customers, where they will depend on the controller's judgement and analytical skills, and their risk in making the appointment, in that the credit controller's overall qualifications might not be of an appropriate level.

Although the work is not in itself physically demanding, it can be a mental strain, in that the responsibilities are considerable and bear direct financial consequences. The employer needs to know that you are up to the job.

All of these concerns can be addressed in your professional CV and you should ensure that they are. What's more, they can be substantiated with evidence of your performance to date, adding weight to the employer's belief that you can help to consolidate the organisation as it moves forward.

No matter how outstanding your background or qualifications, you must think about the employer's requirements at every stage of writing your Credit Control CV. In this sense, your CV is essentially a selling document.

You also need to target your Credit Controller CV to that particular employer. This means doing your research and understanding their organisational objectives before preparing the document. You need to illustrate how you can help them move forward and grow.

As you apply for different jobs, you will need to angle your CV to different employers, so be prepared to amend it each time you submit an application. The point is to make your Credit Control CV absolutely relevant to that vacancy and that vacancy alone.

Capture Attention with Your Credit Controller CV Profile

You should endeavour to communicate the ways in which you meet the employer's requirements in the three to four sentences of your Profile at the top of your Credit Controller CV.

Given that you have about thirty seconds in which to impress an employer, it's important that you highlight your greatest strengths right at the top of your CV.

Most important is your experience in the area of credit. Decide upon three main areas of experience that will sell you most effectively.

For instance, if you have experience with hire purchase agreements and that is relevant to this position, list that first. If that experience is in a similar industry or sector to the advertised post, also mention that.

Additionally, think of your three strongest personal attributes when it comes to your professional life. What do you bring to your work? Refer here to your main transferable skills and aptitudes. Qualities such as analytical thinking and sound judgement will be relevant here.

The wisest approach is to focus on those areas that are uppermost in the employer's list of required skills, strengths and experience. Be prepared to rewrite your Profile so that it aligns with the priorities of every employer you send your CV to.

Create Impact on Your Credit Control CV with Your Achievements

Quantification adds weight and impact to the Achievements section of your Credit Controller CV. Finding numbers in the form of measurements, financial amounts and percentages should not present a problem for people working in this field.

The idea is provide evidence of your ability by quantifying the work that you handled and the degree to which you made a difference. The best achievements say what you did and how it changed an existing situation for the better, and by what amount.

This helps the employer to envisage what you might be able to do for their organisation, if you are appointed. Achievements are powerful and do more to sell you than perhaps any other part of your Credit Controller's CV. For example, an achievement might read as follows:

• Undertook comprehensive overhaul of corporate credit policy to successfully reduce bad debt rate from 2.5% to 1.2% during the last 6 months.
• Managed accounts receivable and through robust approach to customer relations, reduced credit period from 90 to 60 days.

The best option is to select three or six achievements. Select them according to the priorities of the employer you are applying to - in other words, change them around for different job openings so that your Credit Control CV is always targeted to specific jobs.

This is important for, in conjunction with your Profile, the Achievements section can really make you stand out as an individual. Others may have the same experience or qualifications, but your achievements are usually unique and provide the employer with a real sense of how well you can handle credit control.

Impress With Your Career History

Career Histories can make very dull reading on a Credit Controller CV, particularly if your previous jobs have all been fairly similar. Again, there can be little to differentiate your employment record from that of someone else who has held similar positions and with comparable skills.

You therefore need to make your experience sound more singular and to sell yourself as the best prospect for the job opening. To do this, present your experience not as a list of duties lifted straight from a job description, but as a series of achievements.

You should include the following details for each job that you list. Your bullet points should not be paragraphs, but you can make each one around two sentences long without losing impact.

1. Name of the employer and your job title (e.g. Credit Controller).
2. Your role and general responsibilities as a Credit Controller, particularly with regard to credit processes.
3. Details of any special work you did in regard to credit control, such as making amendments to policies during a period of change, helping during migration to new credit control software, etc.
4. Details of any new credit control systems, processes and practices you introduced..

While writing about what you did in each credit control role, structure the sentence to highlight which strengths in terms of abilities, knowledge and skills you used to achieve results.

In this way, you will communicate all the important information about your selling points in an interesting way that is more likely to motivate the employer to read you Credit Control CV and invite you for a job interview.

What you need to do is consistently address the employer's concerns about the extent of your potential contribution to the credit control function and the risk involved in appointing you.

Will you fit into the financial team swiftly and with little training? Are you efficient and is your work accurate? Will you grow and progress through the company?

In your career history be very specific, as this will help ensure that the employer trusts what you are describing. Here are some examples of what you can include in your Credit Control CV Career History section:

• Drawing up hire purchase agreements, collect deposits, etc. - can you provide values for these? This might be a total annual value, or the values of your biggest accounts.
• Liaising with credit bureaus and banks to ascertain credit worthiness of potential customers - again, can you provide the number of contacts you would make per client, the number of clients per year, the benchmarks applied, etc.?
• Acting with authority in accepting or rejecting applications for credit - think about the number of decisions you were required to make, the financial values involved, the scale of the contracts in terms of sales made, etc.
• Reviewing and analysing financial reports when assessing new business customers, interviewing representatives and assessing past records of credit payments met - be specific about the scale of the reports and your requirements, as you will be reflecting your degree of authority by describing them accurately.
• Formulating credit agreements (or assist in the formulation), interpreting the legal terms and requirements to the clients, securing signatures of both parties - again, list values, length of time spent on this process, etc.
• Conducting monthly checks on credit accounts, contacting customers who default as necessary, or assigning account to a collection agency or legal party if default continues - bad debt does not mean that you have failed, as it will be a part of the work, but you can turn this into an achievement by stating how much you successfully recovered in percentage terms.

Education and Training on a Credit Controller CV

Your education is important, but at this stage of your career your qualifications are more important and need to stand out on your Credit Control CV. If you are fully or partly qualified with a financial institute, or with a higher qualification that fits this profession, list this first.

List completed training courses and the organisation you trained with and any relevant dates.

University or college degrees should be included and any further education college qualifications.

Training in financial software can also be included on your Credit Controller CV, along with dates you achieved the certification.

Present Yourself Professionally

As an existing or aspiring Credit Controller, you will need to demonstrate a certain degree of management or supervisory responsibilities. The overall presentation of your Credit Control CV will reflect on your standards of management, whether it's managing accounts or people.

For instance, you cannot claim to be someone who pays attention to every detail if your CV is peppered with spelling mistakes - the employer would pay great heed to your errors than to your claims. It is important to check and double check your CV for errors, using the spell checker, your own eye (print a copy out) and a friend or colleague's opinion.

The formatting of your CV should be extremely clear, so that it is easy to read, being well laid out and presented, Your Credit Controller CV must sell you to an employer.

Finally, consider including some personal interests (if you have space), these will help to convince the employer that you are a well balanced individual, who is not just a 'numbers person', but can integrate well with their workforce in general and make a positive contribution on a cultural level too.

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