Hi everyone,
I’d really appreciate some advice from people already working in FP&A.
I graduated about 6 months ago (International Finance) and I’m currently working in retail as a SA. Over the past few months, I’ve been involved in monitoring daily store performance, like tracking KPIs like sales, conversion rate, and UPT, and doing some basic variance analysis using PowerBI.
Recently I’ve become really interested in FP&A because it feels like a good combination of finance + business + operations, especially coming from a retail background. I also genuinely enjoy financial modelling and forecasting.
The problem is:
I’ve been applying to a lot of FP&A / Finance Analyst roles, but I keep getting rejected mainly due to “lack of relevant experience”.
So I wanted to ask:
What are the most important skills I should focus on to break into FP&A?
(e.g. Excel, modelling, accounting knowledge, etc.)
If I can’t land an internship, would doing my own projects actually help?
If yes, what kind of projects would be most valuable?
(e.g. building a 3-statement model, budgeting model, retail KPI dashboard?)
From your perspective, how can I better position my retail experience as relevant to FP&A?
I feel like I’m stuck in that “no experience → no opportunity” loop, so any practical advice would really help.
Thanks in advance!