How to get your first finance job with no experience

You need experience to get the job. You need the job to get the experience. Everybody hits that wall eventually and in finance it looks taller than most, because the whole industry seems to run on qualifications you haven't started yet. Here's the reassuring bit: it doesn't. Finance has always built its own people. Somebody has to open the post, code the invoices, chase the customers who haven't paid and tick off the bank statement line by line. Nobody in Britain pays a qualified accountant to do that. Employers want somebody careful, honest and quick on the uptake. Then they train them, put them through exams and watch them turn into the qualified one within a few years.

That somebody has to come from somewhere. This guide is the practical version of how it becomes you: what finance employers genuinely screen for at entry, where the junior jobs actually live, how to apply so a human reads your name and what happens between hitting submit and your first Monday. One honest caveat before we start. Finance mostly opens its doors at 17 or 18 rather than 16, so if you're younger, read this next to our guide on finance jobs at 16 and at 18. Nothing below changes. It just starts a little later than it would in a shop.

What finance employers actually screen for

Strip out the person-spec language and there are four things a finance manager is hunting for when they read applications for a junior role.

Accuracy comes first, always. In a finance team, careful beats clever for at least your first year. A transposed digit turns a payment of one thousand into ten thousand and somebody spends a day unpicking it. So they're looking for evidence you're the sort of person who checks. This is also why your application is the test rather than a description of it: a CV with a typo in it has already answered the question. Read it aloud, then get an adult to read it again.

Second is comfort with numbers, which is not the same thing as brilliance at maths. Nobody is asking you to do calculus at a desk. The actual work is arithmetic, percentages, cross-checking two lists against each other and noticing when a figure looks wrong before anyone else does. A decent GCSE maths grade is the usual floor and most employers say so in the advert. Beyond that floor it's about attitude to numbers rather than talent with them.

Third is trust. From week one you'll see things you're not supposed to talk about: what people earn, which customers are struggling, the bank details of every supplier the company uses. Discretion is a hiring criterion in this industry in a way it simply isn't in most. A named referee who'll vouch for you, plus a clean straightforward account of yourself, settles that question quietly.

Fourth is sticking power. Almost every entry-level finance job comes bundled with study, whether that's an apprenticeship or day release or exam fees the employer pays. That's money they're spending on a bet. They want signs you finish things you start, which is why a two-year commitment to anything at all - a team, an instrument, a Saturday job, a cadet unit - carries more weight here than you'd guess.

Notice what isn't on that list. A degree. A finance qualification. Any prior office job. None of the four requires a single day of paid work to prove.

Where the junior jobs really are

The biggest employer of finance juniors in the country isn't a famous firm. It's the ordinary small or medium-sized business with a finance team of three, sitting above a car park in a town near you, which needs somebody to run purchase ledger while the accountant does everything else. Those roles are advertised as accounts assistant, finance assistant, purchase ledger clerk or accounts payable assistant. There are thousands of them and they train from zero as a matter of routine.

Accountancy practices are the second front. Every market town has two or three and they take on juniors to do bookkeeping, VAT returns, payroll runs and audit support for their clients. A practice is the fastest education in the sector you can buy, because you'll see the insides of thirty different businesses in a year instead of one.

Then the big and mid-sized firms, which run school-leaver and higher apprenticeship programmes alongside their graduate intakes. Real, well paid and genuinely open to A-level students, though competitive and early. Search the firm's own careers site for the words school leaver or apprenticeship rather than trusting a list somebody wrote two years ago, because programme names change and deadlines land in the autumn before the September you'd start.

Don't skip the public sector either. Councils, NHS trusts, universities, housing associations and big school trusts all run finance offices and advertise apprenticeships on their own websites. The pay is banded, the training is structured and nobody there will be strange about your age.

Two more doors worth knowing. Payroll bureaux and outsourced finance providers hire in volume and teach a specialism that follows you everywhere. And finance recruitment agencies place temporary cover for holidays, maternity leave and month-end crunches, which is one of the few genuine ways into an office with an empty CV. Register with two local ones, be reachable and say yes to short bookings. A fortnight of covering someone's inbox turns into a reference and often into an offer.

The walk-in play doesn't translate here the way it does in a café. The finance equivalent is a short, polite, well-spelled email to a small local practice asking whether they take juniors, followed up with a phone call a week later. It feels awkward. It also works far more often than the silence of an online form, because at a five-person practice the person reading that email is the person who decides.

The proof you already have

"No experience" nearly always means "I haven't translated my life yet". So translate it.

Were you treasurer of anything - a club, a year group, a charity week? That's cash handling, record keeping and reporting to people who care about the total. Ran a fundraiser and kept the float straight? Same thing. Sold things on Vinted or eBay and worked out whether you were actually making money after postage? That's margin, which is more than some adults understand. Kept the spreadsheet for a fantasy football league, a group holiday or a family Christmas budget? Say so, plainly, because spreadsheet instinct is exactly the raw material.

A part-time job in a shop or a kitchen counts double here. Cashing up, spotting a till that's down, handling refunds without panicking - it's small-scale finance and it maps directly onto reconciliation work. Maths GCSE, business studies, an economics A-level, a Young Enterprise team: all legitimate evidence. Our sitewide guide to landing your first job walks through this translation trick properly.

The rule holds across every category on this site. Never write "no experience yet". Write what you have done, in the language of the job you want.

How to apply so you actually get seen

Speed first. Junior finance adverts don't stay quiet for long and many small employers interview the first decent applicant rather than waiting for the closing date. Applying within a day or two is worth more than another evening of polishing.

Then tailor, lightly but visibly. One sentence naming the employer and giving a real reason kills the copy-paste smell instantly. And use the two-line trick at the top of your CV, adapted for this industry: your availability plus your intent. "Available: full-time from 1 July. Keen to start AAT Level 2 alongside the role." That second line answers the question every finance employer is silently asking, which is whether you'll study. Our finance CV and cover letter guide has the whole skeleton with lines you can adapt tonight.

Two small things that decide more than they should. Make your email address sensible. Record a voicemail greeting that says your name, because a missed call from an unknown number is often the interview you never knew about.

What happens after you apply

Finance recruitment has more stages than shop work, so know the shape in advance.

Online tests come first at bigger employers: numerical reasoning, sometimes verbal or logical too. Free practice tests are everywhere, so do three before you sit a real one. Small employers usually skip straight to a phone screen instead - a ten-minute call about your availability, your study plans and why finance.

After that, an interview, occasionally a recorded video one where you answer questions to a camera with no human present. Odd, but survivable with rehearsal. Bigger programmes run assessment days with a group exercise and an in-tray task, which is less scary than it sounds: they're watching whether you're methodical and whether you include other people. Some employers add a short spreadsheet test. Prepare for all of it with our 10 common finance interview questions.

Then paperwork: right-to-work documents, National Insurance number, bank details, references. Regulated employers sometimes add a background or credit check, which is routine rather than sinister. Have the documents in one folder so nothing delays your start.

That's the whole route. Four qualities you can already evidence, a list of employers who train from scratch as standard and a process that rewards anyone willing to apply early and check their own work. Finance carries a careful beginner further than almost any other office job. If you're weighing an apprenticeship against college first, our routes into finance guide lays the doors side by side. Otherwise head back to the finance hub for the rest of the series, or go straight at it and browse live finance jobs while today's adverts are still warm.