Top 15 Junior Accountant Skills to Stay Top of Your Career

This post presents detailed information and list of important junior accountant skills and qualities you need to develop to be effective in performing the duties of the role and to advance your career.

Please, read on:

One thing that is constant even in business organizations is change.

Changes can occur for some reasons ranging from promotions, sack, and resignations, and other factors that may bring about replacement of some staff in the organization.

One of the people that stand a chance to benefit from this change are junior accountants.

This is because they are not really well experienced in this job but are given the opportunity to learn and improve their skills.

Who is a Junior Accountant?

Simply put, a junior accountant is an entry level partially inexperienced accountant.

As the title suggests, most junior accountants have their work curtailed due to inexperience until they are able to handle greater responsibilities in their organizations.

Top 15 Junior Accountant Skills to Stay Top of Your Career

Here are major skills and qualities you need to be effective in your work as a junior accountant:

Mathematical skills
Excellent accounting skills
Time management
Reporting skills
Confidentiality
Objectivity
Coordination
Good focus
Attention to details
IT knowledge
Ability to work independently
Ability to work under pressure
Teamwork
Good problem solving skills
Analytical skills.

Mathematical skills

This is one good skill you should boast of as a junior accountant. Meaning that mathematics is something you feel comfortable with.

Mathematics remains the building blocks of accounting and other statistical jobs.

How favorable you find the job you are currently doing is dependent on how proficient you are with mathematics.

Mathematics cannot be done without in the job of a junior accountant.

You are in a position where you find yourself manipulating figures, so it is important to have this skill.

Understand that no matter the field of accounting you are in, you must see the need to have excellent mathematical skills because accounting entails manipulation of figures to get some job done.

Excellent accounting skills

After acquiring some good mathematical skills, the next thing to set your heart on acquiring is good accounting skills, i.e. the ability to record financial transactions in a good accounting manner for proper understanding and workability.

Though it is assumed that by reason of being a certified accountant through formal education, accounting skills must be proven in your day to day job execution.

Your ability to do your job well will be dependent on how strong your accounting skills are.

Mathematical skills combined with proficiency in accounting will definitely put you in a good position to progress in your job or career as a junior accountant in your organization.

So, step up your mathematical and accounting skills.

Time management

Working under a chief accountant or a general accountant in the organization demands that you should always have time management as a basic skill that you work with.

The leader or head of your department will not be pleased to know that you find it difficult to manage your time.

So, if you truly want to please your boss in your job as a junior accountant, you should show yourself to be someone that is capable of achieving much within a short period of time.

Nobody gives you the whole time in the world to carry out any task given to you.

So make sure that you use any good methodology available to you to get your job done within the little time given to you.

Remember that if you always find it difficult to work with time, you will put your job under threat.

Reporting skills

Reporting skills is very necessary in your job as a junior accountant. There are two possible things for you to report at every point in time.

You have to pay attention to these two forms of report else you might be shooting yourself in the foot.

The first for you to report is the financial transactions in the department, which you know is your basic job.

You should put to proper use your accounting skills and prepare a good financial report which the head of the department can work with.

The second form of report you will need to do is the day to day reporting of your activities.

This is more of accountability playing out in your job.

Your leader or manager will always demand to know what’s going on with you and how you are doing in your job.

Confidentiality

There are facts and information about your organization which you are not expected to let out to anyone outside the organization.

That is what we call confidentiality in your job.

Those information made available to you is for your consumption and not for you to disseminate it without due permission.

Confidentiality will definitely be needed by you in this job because no organization will like to work with a staff that has no regard for confidentiality.

You just have to learn to keep some information to yourself regardless of anyone out there who may like to know what you know.

One deadly consequence of not regarding confidentiality is that it has the tendency of earning you a sack or termination of your appointment.

Objectivity

Objectivity entails that you are doing whatever you are doing in the workplace with the intention of meeting the organization needs of the organization.

You should know that you are employed or hired to help solve some organization needs.

You should have this at the back of your mind that your role in the organization is to help make running of activities in the organization smoother and more purposeful, and to help the organization grow beyond what it is now.

So, when you wake up in the morning to prepare for your job, one of the things that should be at the back of your mind is how you can be helpful to your organization in achieving its goals.

If you are not doing that then you are not adding value to the organization.

Coordination

Coordinating your work is a good stuff for you to know how to do. It is necessary for you to be able to put together your activities and decide how each activity is going to be based on priority and time needed to complete each task given to you.

This requires a high level of coordination.

Coordination is a skill that you will need every day in your job.

By this we mean that any day you decide to not apply the principle of coordination, you are likely to make some mistakes and most bizarrely wasting precious time.

The summary of this point is that for you to be more organized in your approach to work, coordination must be something you hold in high regard.

Good focus

Focusing on your job is one of the ways to avoid distraction in your job.

Distraction is the last thing you need if at all you need it in your job.

So to do away with distraction, you should be able to know what your job entails and do your best to focus on the task at hand.

This works together with concentration.

Concentration is a skill that when properly harnessed can help you overcome the temptation of veering off the direction you are supposed to face in your job.

This is when your input and output begins to suffer.

So, you must remain focused on the details of your job and other minor jobs you might be given to do probably by your manager in the department.

If you fail to focus on your job, you will make mistakes that may be too critical for you to correct.

Attention to details

One critical aspect of your job is to watch out for errors, either due to oversight or assumption.

You should be able to make sure that you avoid these forms of errors to remain impressive and relevant in your job for a long time.

To avoid some of these avoidable errors, you need to pay good attention to details in documents made available for you to work with.

You have to take time to study the individual documents and know what each of them is all about.

It is in studying these documents that you will be able to spot errors and ask questions where you are not sure of or clear about.

This will help you not make mistakes due to assumptions.

This is a sure way to stay long in your job and make most out of every moment.

IT knowledge

By now you know that your job will be tedious and time wasting if you are not able to harness the possibilities in the digital world to make your job efficient.

This is why you should take your time and learn some Microsoft software tools that can help you in your job.

You’ve got some accounting packages out there that can help you make light your job.

Microsoft Excel is one of them.

It is a software tool that is specifically made for this accounting purpose.

If you are not acquainted with the workings of this software tool, then you are not doing yourself any favor.

You have to take advantage of this and other software applications and give your job a boost.

It is in your interest to use Microsoft Excel in your job.

You need it and to a large extent your organization needs it.

Ability to work independently

Your employer will not always be in a position to monitor or supervise you.

This is because you are not the only responsibility he/she has to attend to.

So he/she expects you to show that you have the ability to work with little or no supervision.

The ability to work independently is a special quality to have; it endears you to your employer to make him/her believe that you are sincere and can be trusted in the area of your job.

If the reverse is the case, then it means that you have a long way to go in your job.

The ability to work independently is more of a character than a skill.

This is because, problems of eye service or pretense is more of a character problem than any other thing you can consider.

So, you need to prove to your boss that you are capable of working independently without fear of making mistakes.

Ability to work under pressure

This is not something that is common with every employee out there but it is one skill that can make you a hot commodity in the organization and a quality that can help you secure a more lucrative job in the future.

Pressure in the workplace is real.

Workplace pressure may not be avoided but can be managed.

If you find yourself under pressure whether from your boss or any other big personality in the organization, you should embrace the pressure and make the most out of it without complaining.

Remember that the job you have now is a dream for some people out there who are without job, and some of these people will be glad to take up the pressure.

So, if you want to retain your job and probably succeed in it, then learn to do well when under pressure.

Teamwork

In addition to working independently, you should also make sure to cherish team spirit and contribute your quota to the success and growth of the organization.

That is the essence of team spirit. If you are not contributing your own quota to the growth of the organization, then you may not be known as an asset to the organization you are working for.

There are lots of people that you can work with in an organization.

Employees at your level and the executives of the organization are some of the people you should consider working well with at all times.

In the process of teamwork, you are bound to get better and better.

But when you want to put yourself first and neglect the importance of teamwork, you will labor so much and produce little results as opposed to what you can achieve if you work with other members of the team.

Again, remember that the goal is to bring about growth in the organization.

Good problem solving skills

Ability to bring things under control is a good way to exhibit problem solving skills.

The essence of this skill is to help you put things under control no matter the degree or difficulties associated with the problem you are faced with.

So this is the thing to do, if you should be faced with challenges in your job, make sufficient effort to know why such challenges abound and from there you should be able to have a hint of what to do to bring the whole situation under control.

So, what you need to do is anticipate challenges and brace yourself up to work on those challenges to bring about something good.

Sometimes, you need to understand that challenges are the stepping stones you might need to make progress in your job.

Analytical skills

Having accounting skills wouldn’t be complete if you are not good in doing analysis.

It is an unforgivable offence in the accounting field for you to do without proper analysis. This can only lead to exaggerated results.

Exaggeration is definitely one thing that cannot be tolerated in any organization, especially when it has to do with financial issues.

This means that you don’t have to find yourself being queried for carelessness in regards to issues that you could have avoided if you took your time to analyze what was made available to you.

So you don’t have to joke with analysis of anything given to you to work with it, especially financial documents.

If you are able to spot out some irregularities within documents, try and make it known to the relevant authorities for rectification.

Junior Accountant Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume or CV for the junior accountant position, the skills and qualities highlighted above can be applied in making an effective Skills section for the resume/CV.

Your resume/CV will be boosted to give you an interview with the recruiter/employer if it shows that you have the right skills and qualities to succeed on the junior accountant job.

Conclusion

The entry level accounting position is the role of a junior accountant.

This role basically involves familiarizing yourself with the accounting system of the organization where you work.

And to get to better roles in the future, you will need to develop and work with the skills and qualities shared in this post.