Get Hired Using Excel

I am often asked about the Excel skills required to get hired working in data.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first…

Before I get into the skills I want to anticipate obvious answers. Yes, you need to be curious and analytical, to learn the business problems before focusing on the tools.

But if you're my audience, you ALREADY know this. So what are the specific Excel skills required to get hired using Excel?

1️⃣ You need to know your Excel formulas

The basics: =, &, +, SUM(), IF, Lookup functions, and some math and finance functions. You need to be comfortable with these. The best part about knowing these formulas is that you can carry them to other technologies, like Google Sheets. In addition, a solid grasp of formulas will help you with Power BI and Tableau.

2️⃣ Power Query

If you’ve put off learning Power Query, now is the time to learn. So many organizations aren’t using it, are scared of it, or don’t know what it is. You will absolutely knock their socks off with what you learn. Power Query will let you pull data from just about any messy data set.

3️⃣ Power BI

Ok this isn’t really an Excel skill, but Power BI was originally incubated in Excel. And the two go together like peanut butter & jelly. Officially, I don’t like Power BI (coincidentally I also don’t like jelly). And although it’s not a core part of my offering, there are times when it presents itself as the better solution and I have to use it. Knowing it allows me to offer much more.

Learn the skills you need to land that data driven role or promotion.

What are you waiting for?