interviewing for a job that's data focused or requires Excel skills expect to be
asked more than just do you know how to use Excel I've interviewed many many
people for positions where Excel skills were a central part of what they'd be
doing it's usually pretty clear from people's responses to these questions
who's actually used the tool and who uses it more just for data entry today
we're looking at the five most common types of Excel interview questions and
exactly how to answer them welcome I'm Jen we're going to look at five common
Excel interview questions that could be asked in any job interview if the Job
Description specifies other specific skills in Excel be prepared to talk
about those as well this is going to be a little bit unique to every job the
first Excel interview question is what functions do you find most useful from
the interviewers perspective this answers to different things this
question automatically assumes that you're familiar with the functions and
how to use them and also which ones will come in most handy for the type of job
you'll be doing think about your answer a little bit in context of the role
you're applying for for most positions though there are going to be a few
functions that are great ones to talk about don't bring up a function if
you're really not sure how to use it or you haven't made much use of it because
if you're asked further questions about it this may look like you have less
skill than what you have instead of more since you won't be able to explain it so
which functions are good to talk about assuming that you know them the if
statement is a good one to talk about this can be used in a huge variety of
scenarios and when you nest it with other statements or even multiple if
statements it can become extremely complex and handle a lot of logic
vlookup is another one that hiring managers like to hear about this is a
common function you should know if you're utilizing functions in Excel
while it has its limitations it also does offer a lot of functionality
alternatively you could talk about index-match
this both shows an advanced knowledge of Excel functions and also shows that you
recognize some of the limitations of functions like the lookout ii excel
interview question is have you used pivot tables and how have you used them
as a hiring manager again I'm not going to let you just say yes I've used them
without explaining a little bit more the best way to talk about pivot tables is
to talk about something useful that you've done with them this could be
something in your current job without sharing private company information you
can still talk about how you use that pivot table maybe you used it to analyze
sales per month by region and by salesperson this speaks both to your
analytical ability and your ability to use Excel the third question I like to
ask is what types of Excel charts do you like to use this is again a bit of a
loaded question because I'm really looking for a few different things in
your answer I do want to know how familiar you are with Excel charts but I
also want to know your mathematical capabilities and some of your data
visualization inclinations there are two answers here that I really don't like to
hear the first pie charts pie charts have an excellent place they're very
valuable if you're looking at a snapshot in time and comparing just a few things
on a percentage basis the problem with pie charts though is they're often used
way more often than they should be and they don't give the impression to the
person looking at it that you really want them to take away it's also not a
great way to compare data over time by showing multiple pie charts side-by-side
again occasional use is good they do have their value but this shouldn't be
your go to main chart what would I use instead of a pie chart I talked about
bar or column charts they tend to make a more clear impression on the people that
are reading them and they also allow you the ability to show changes over time
especially when you get into stacked bar and stacked column charts or you add in
a line chart over top the other type of answer that I'm always a little nervous
about is when people talk about liking to use 3d charts as their default or
things that have multiple axes so that you have height going up you have things
going front and back and side to side this can look pretty cool when you put
them together but a lot of times they're really
difficult to read so maybe they're good in a report we're no action is being
taken off of but if you want the reader to have a take away that causes them to
take action in a certain direction these types of charts often aren't the best
way to convey the information bar or column charts or stacked or combinations
of different chart types are great things to talk about in your answer here
talk about the practical application where you've used them and when you
might choose one over the other depending on how the conversation after
this question goes the fourth question that you might encounter and I
personally like to ask in an interview is tell me about some of the Excel work
that you're most proud of this gets people talking more about their hands-on
application with the tool lots of people can show they have certification or
training in Excel and that's good to an extent you need a foundation to build
working off of but if you don't know how to take that and turn it into action and
apply it to the data you have and the issues you're trying to address or the
tasks you're trying to accomplish all of the training in the world is meaningless
so be able to talk about some practical things that you've done with Excel what
types of data did you use how did you make it useful was it something that you
could easily update when new data became available these are great things to talk
about in answering this question the last Excel interview question that I
like to ask and this is specific to people that are doing data analytics
work is when would you choose Excel to do your analysis over SAS or Python or R
or whatever the data analytics tool is that that company uses there are times
when Excel is the better choice while Excel can't do everything that these big
analytics tools can do sometimes especially if you're doing an ad hoc
one-off small analysis with a small amount of data Excel is going to be
quicker to use and easier to get to the end result this is especially true if
you're mainly summarizing data or making some simple graphics it's also a great
place to do the work when you need to share the actual source data and the
working information with someone else that's maybe not as familiar with the
data analyst tools or doesn't have access to them
those are my top five excel interview questions on how to answer them if you
like this video please give it a thumbs up so I know you want to see more videos
just like this thanks so much for watching I'll see you in the next video