What to Include in a Controller LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn has evolved into a powerful tool for personal branding, professional networking, and job hunting. As a controller, you can take advantage of the platform’s features to establish a strong presence that highlights your financial aptitude and leadership acumen. An effective controller profile creates a clear narrative of your role in financial management by blending illustrations of your technical expertise, strategic insight, and integrity.

General Principles

Your goal is to highlight your expertise by giving examples of the measurable impact you’ve had on budgeting, auditing, and reporting, along with ways that you’ve streamlined financial processes and systems. Emphasize how you’ve managed and motivated a team, and showcase your ability to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and form strategic partnerships within an organization. Demonstrate that you are up on the latest financial regulations and applications and have committed yourself to ongoing learning by gaining and maintaining certifications and taking part in trainings.

Specific LinkedIn Tactics

LinkedIn’s headline field currently offers 220 characters to sell yourself with. In addition to your job title, load your headline with your core competencies and areas of expertise such as compliance, planning, and reporting. Try to include keywords that will come up when recruiters in the finance industry search for controller candidates. Add any designations you have like CPA or CMA. Many job seekers use pipes (this character: |), bullets, or other symbols to separate the fragments in their headline. Here are some examples.

Your About section should elaborate on your headline and naturally lead into the rest of your profile. Continue to use searchable keywords here. Reveal your career journey and the challenges you’ve overcome, and drop in the quantifiable results you’ve achieved in guiding financial decisions and enhancing business performance. What differentiates you as a controller? What elements of the job are you most skilled at or enthusiastic about?

In the Experience section, supplement your job titles with detailed insights into initiatives you've spearheaded, leadership roles you’ve taken on, financial best practices you’ve implemented, internal controls you’ve optimized—anything that sets you apart as a controller. Again, any specific metrics and numbers you can include here, like growth percentage or budgetary savings, will help capture recruiters’ attention.

Education is obviously where formal schooling and degrees go, but be sure to emphasize your business and finance certifications (CPA, CMA, etc.) and continuing education and training in leadership or current regulations. Skills should include both technical (software, financial analysis) and soft (management, critical thinking) skills, preferably featuring numerous endorsements from former employers and industry professionals. And you should request and compile several entries from your peers and superiors for the Recommendations section that back up the assertions you’ve been making throughout your profile.

There’s a lot more to shaping a compelling LinkedIn profile for controllers including having a professional headshot, but hopefully these quick tips will start you on the path to successfully connecting with accounting and finance recruiters and putting your accomplishments, expertise, and influence in the best possible light.