What Finance Employers Across Europe Actually Ask For, Country by Country

Excel still tops almost every country

Job ads rarely admit it out loud, but Excel is still the most requested finance skill in most of the European markets we track. In Poland, Excel appeared in 67% of the 297 finance postings we looked at, by far the highest share of any country in this data. Luxembourg followed at 54% (out of 83 postings), Sweden at 50% (202 postings), and Belgium at 45% (517 postings). Germany and Spain were close together at 44% each, out of 678 and 117 postings respectively. France sat lower, at 35% of its 556 finance postings, and the Netherlands lowest of the group at 33% (234 postings).

The gap between Poland's 67% and France's 35% is wide enough to suggest something real: in some markets, spreadsheet fluency alone is treated as close to a baseline requirement, while in others it's assumed and the ad focuses on other things instead.

Budgeting and controlling: not the same story everywhere

Budgeting shows the widest spread of any skill in this dataset. It appeared in 56% of Belgium's finance ads, 53% in Sweden, 50% in the Netherlands, and 35% each in Germany and France. Poland's finance ads mentioned it least often, at just 9%.

Controlling follows a different pattern. Germany leads at 42%, ahead of Belgium (39%) and Sweden (39%), with France close behind at 33%. Poland and the Netherlands both sit much lower, at 16% and 13%.

Put those two together and a rough shape emerges from the numbers: Belgian, Dutch and Swedish finance ads lean heavily on budgeting language, German and French ads put more weight on controlling, and Polish ads ask for neither anywhere near as often, leaning instead on the Excel and SAP skills below.

SAP and forecasting show up unevenly too

SAP appears across every country in this data but at very different rates. It's most common in Germany (31%) and Spain (33%), followed by Poland (27%), Sweden (25%) and Luxembourg (25%). France and Belgium both list it at 15%, and the Netherlands least often at 9%.

Forecasting follows its own pattern again. Belgium leads at 37%, with Sweden at 36%, the Netherlands at 31%, Spain at 35%, France at 24%, and Germany at 23%. Poland's finance ads mention it least, at 10%.

None of these figures move together in any obvious way. A country that asks for SAP often, like Spain, doesn't necessarily ask for forecasting at a similarly high or low rate, and the same goes the other way. Each skill has its own geography.

IFRS, treasury and Power BI: the specialist layer

A smaller group of skills shows up less often overall but marks out specific markets. IFRS is mentioned in 26% of Swedish finance ads and 22% of Luxembourg's, compared with just 12% in Germany, the only two other countries where the source data records it.

Treasury appears prominently in France, at 33% of postings, and to a lesser extent in the Netherlands, at 11%. Power BI, meanwhile, shows up most in Spain (22%) and Luxembourg (20%), with smaller shares in Belgium (14%) and Poland (12%). Financial modeling is listed in 23% of Luxembourg's finance ads and 17% of Spain's.

These are the skills worth flagging on a CV if you're applying into one of these specific markets, since they appear far less consistently across the board than Excel, budgeting or controlling.

What this means if you're job hunting

If you're applying for finance roles in more than one European country, tailoring your CV by market isn't just good practice, it lines up with what these ads actually ask for. A candidate targeting Poland gains more by foregrounding Excel and SAP experience; one targeting Belgium, the Netherlands or Sweden gets more mileage from budgeting and forecasting; and IFRS or treasury experience carries more weight specifically in Sweden, Luxembourg and France.

None of this replaces reading the individual job ad closely, but it does explain why a CV that lands well in one country's application pile can go quiet in another. The finance skills employers ask for are set locally, not by some single European standard, and the postings back that up.

See current finance roles and full skill breakdowns for Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Luxembourg and Spain.