How to Get Into Finance With No Experience

How to Get Into Finance With No Experience was originally published on Forage.

Finance is all about the money. Literally. The finance career path focuses on managing the money of corporations, individuals, government organizations, banks, and more. 

It’s all about the money when it comes to payday, too. Finance is typically a highly lucrative career path — even in entry-level roles. Yet it can also be stressful and demanding, requiring long hours, late nights, and fast-paced work. 

If you think finance is the right career path for you, how can you land a role in the field? We took insights from top companies and finance professionals to create a guide on how to get into finance with no experience.

Get an Education and Build the Right Skills

The first key aspect to landing a job in finance is building the skills and knowledge you need to enter the field. While you’ll learn more on the job, there are a few prerequisites for landing the role.

Get a Degree in Finance (or Something Related)

Most finance jobs require at least a bachelor’s degree.

According to Zippia, the vast majority (77%) of finance professionals have a bachelor’s degree. Only 5% of professionals have no higher education degree; 8% have an associate’s degree, and 11% have a master’s.

Finance companies tend to look for students who have majored in finance or a related field, such as economics, business, accounting, or mathematics. 

>>RELATED: 13+ Jobs for Finance Majors in 2025

Build Technical Finance Skills

While finance isn’t usually considered a tech career, it requires technical skills to analyze, report on, and predict finances. Some general key finance skills include:

  • Financial modeling skills, including DCF valuation, leveraged buyout (LBO) models, merger & acquisition (M&A) models, and sensitivity analysis — these are particularly foundational for investment banking and private equity roles
  • Microsoft Excel skills, including complex formulas, pivot tables, macros, and financial functions like net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR)
  • PowerPoint skills for creating compelling pitch decks and client presentations
  • Financial statement analysis, including the ability to read balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements, calculate key ratios, and identify trends
  • Industry-specific software expertise, including Bloomberg Terminal, FactSet, Capital IQ, QuickBooks, and Sage
  • Data analytics and visualization skills using tools like Power BI, Tableau, or Python
  • Knowledge of key performance indicators and metrics such as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA), working capital ratios, and industry-specific benchmarks

“My number one [skill] on the list is the use of spreadsheets for financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting,” says Iqbal Ahmad, founder and CEO of Britannia School of Academics and certified accountant (ACCA) and management accountant (CIMA). “Though it’s a very basic skill to acquire, the great thing about it is that it’s a lifelong skill that can be used in a multitude of roles, not just for financial planning. As an employer, I will list down the use of MS Office tools as a prerequisite for most office-based jobs and will require demonstration of this skill for any finance-related job.”

Ahmad also notes that soft skills like analytical skills and problem-solving are critical “as most finance-related roles require understanding of complex information to solve problems,” he says. “Again, as an employer, I get the candidates to attempt both verbal reasoning and numerical reasoning tests as part of the recruitment process — and recall attempting many such assessments when I was applying for finance-related jobs after my graduation.”

Consider What Finance Role Is Right for You

Finance is a broad career path with a variety of different applications. As you build general finance skills and knowledge, it’s time to start considering what type of finance career you want. Are you interested in being a part of major corporate transactions as an investment banker? Do you prefer working with people and want to become a personal finance advisor? Are you by the book and attentive to detail as an accountant should be? 

Figuring out what type of finance role is right for you might involve some trial and error, including trying different part-time work experiences, internships, or externships.

If you’re looking for somewhere to start, try taking our free, stress-free finance careers quiz. 

What Finance Career Is Right for Me? Quiz

Take our quiz to figure out which career in finance could be right for you based on your interests and preferences. It’s completely free – you’ll just need to sign up to get your results.

Step 1 of 2

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URL

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Pick the TV show or movie you’d be most likely to watch.

a. Moneyball

b. The Big Short

c. Ozark

d. Succession

e. The Accountant

Which career accomplishment would you be most proud of?

a. helping a family create a budget to pay off significant debt over several years

b. playing a key role in a corporation’s acquisition of another company

c. completing complex calculations to develop a flood insurance policy

d. implementing cybersecurity policies to protect a financial institution from fraud

e. designing a financial strategy to save a hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars

Which career aspect is most important to you?

a. challenging work

b. flexibility

c. helping individuals, not corporations

d. earning potential

e. job security

Which problem would you be most interested in working on?

a. quantifying financial risks for a business

b. identifying the best investment strategy based on market data

c. writing code to add features to a budgeting app

d. developing individualized financial plans to help people manage their assets

e. forecasting a company’s future financial performance

Which work environment and responsibility appeals to you the most?

a. lots of face-to-face client meetings and well-paid, high-stakes work

b. quiet time to focus on mathematical computations with few distractions

c. collaborating in a team to build new website features for a brokerage firm

d. devising a financial plan to present to the company’s chief executives

e. working with people from all walks of life

Imagine you’re on a team developing a simulator game where the player is the CEO of a major corporation during a financial crisis. Which responsibility would you be most excited to take on?

a. performing calculations that help the player gauge the potential consequences of their choices

b. programming the game interface

c. determining how the game will keep track of the fictional company’s financial assets

d. simulating how the market crash will impact different industries

e. writing suggestions to guide how the player should proceed in different situations

Choose a downside of work that would bother you the least.

a. having little work-life balance and needing to respond to client questions at all hours

b. having a large portion of your income tied to financial markets out of your control

c. starting in an entry-level role that requires performing tedious calculations

d. challenging and mentally demanding work responsibilities

e. slow progress on a project due to compliance and security requirements

Which book would you be most likely to read?

a. a book about how behavioral economics influences personal finance decisions

b. a book about the tax code and regulation of corporations

c. a book about investment strategies and building wealth long-term

d. a book about how insurance claims adjusters determine who is liable for catastrophes

e. a book about how technological innovation has changed the stock market

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Get Experience

You’ve built up some skills. Now, it’s time to put them into practice. Getting experience — that’s not necessarily full-time work experience — is crucial when applying to entry-level jobs because it shows employers you know how to use your skills in a practical workplace setting.

Do an Internship

Internships are part-time or full-time experiences where you perform entry-level work at a company. While internships can be valuable in any field, they’re particularly important in the finance career path. That’s because many finance companies use their intern programs to hire for their entry-level roles — getting an internship (and completing it successfully) can be a huge advantage when it comes to actually landing a role.

Because finance internships are so valuable, they can be highly competitive, especially in industries like investment banking and wealth management. For example, only 1.5% of 2022 Goldman Sachs internship applications were successful.

To land a coveted finance internship, start early. Some companies begin the application process as early as a year and a half before the actual internship. Your application should prove you have the skills and are involved in extracurricular or leadership activities. 

>>MORE: Learn everything you need to know about how to apply for an internship. 

Do a Forage Job Simulation

Forage job simulations show you what working at top companies is like through a series of simulated job tasks. These simulations are built along with these companies, meaning they not only replicate the actual work a professional at that company does but also prove to that company that you’re qualified to succeed in your role.

Forage offers job simulations in a variety of finance niches, including:

>>MORE: Explore all Forage accounting and banking and financial services job simulations.

Once you complete a Forage job simulation, you’ll receive sample resume bullets and interview tips to help you with your application. Recruiters look for Forage in the application process — helping you stand out and making you 3.3x more likely to land the role.

Apply to Finance Roles

You’ve built your skills and experience. Now, it’s time to apply for the role.

Talk to Finance Professionals

“Some people don’t realize how beneficial networking can be, but it is essential,” says Chunyang Shen, co-founder of Jarsy Inc., a blockchain marketplace. “Besides targeting job portals, connecting with industry peers, going to industry events such as meetups or conferences, or even being active and connected on a platform like LinkedIn provides you with opportunities you do not know exist. The majority of the time, employment opportunities are a result of connections rather than the submission of resumes.”

Ahmad agrees, emphasizing that your “professional impression” is crucial to standing out and landing a role in the industry. 

“It starts with having a professional resume with all sections completed as best as possible, including professional references and relevant internships and projects,” Ahmad says. “Make sure you also have a LinkedIn Profile with at least 500 relevant connections and are engaging with relevant posts. Again, this shows that you are well-connected and well-informed in the sector where you wish to work. Finally, make sure to liaise professionally when employers or agents contact you pre- and post-interview. As an employer, I cannot express how much it puts me off when applicants respond to my emails with a one-liner that fails to answer or address the points raised in my email — it’s a red flag, as I cannot allow a future team member to be responding to my key clients with one-liners without appropriately addressing the points they had earlier raised.”

Build a Portfolio

Because you don’t have any professional work experience, it can be harder for employers to understand if you have the experience you need to do the role well. Make their lives easier — and your application stronger — with an online portfolio.

Shen recommends including “personal finance projects, where students can examine stocks or develop a fake portfolio or hypothetical investment plan.”

Your goal is to provide the recruiter or hiring manager with proof that you’ve put your finance technical skills into practice, even if it’s through a personal project or made-up scenario. 

Stay Up to Date on Larger Trends

Interviewers will want to see that you have a broad understanding of the finance industry as a whole — that you know the larger context of your skills and experience. Before you interview, brush up on your industry news. 

“Be a daily active reader of financial news and reports such as Bloomberg Terminal and Wall Street Journal,” Chen says. “It helps you make intelligent points about trends in interviews.”

How to Get Into Finance With No Experience: The Bottom Line

Knowing how to get into finance with no experience involves balancing skills, experience, and networking.

While finance isn’t a field in tech, you’ll still need technical skills to land an entry-level role. Once you’ve built these general skills, you need to prove you can use them — an internship is generally your best way to get there.

Further, like most industries, networking is becoming increasingly important. In a more traditional field like finance, be sure to be professional in all of your interactions. It’s OK to be personal (with limits) and share human elements of yourself — people enjoy connecting! — but remember to show respect and thank people for their time. 

Ready to jumpstart your career in finance? Get started right now with a real-world Forage job simulation from a top finance company. 

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