This excel blog is dedicated to an everyday finance professional and college students.
In the recent year, I've interviewed candidates fresh off the college as well as candidates with 1 to 3 years of finance analyst / accountant experience.
Proficiency in excel is one of the basic job requirements. And, I was surprised at how many of these candidates were lacking basic skills. I could tell that they have learnt excel in their college or had some experience but the experience that you get working in real scenarios is different.
Here are some of the advantages of being great with excel (based on my experience):
- Ace the interviews: If there is one thing about your interview that you knock out of the park, it is excel. You would want to have an intelligent conversation about excel right from the beginning. This makes the interviewer comfortable about your skills and he / she would quickly move on to the other areas. Any signs of incompetence in this area will most likely weaken the candidates chances of getting hired.
- Get your work done faster
- Impress your manager / peers: Often, your manager / peers will sit with you while working / reviewing a financial model. Would you like to impress them with your knowledge? If yes, this blog is for you. I owe my success in the beginning stages of my career to this. I was the go to person for complex financial models, automated templates and anything that involves getting things done quickly on excel. You peers might not say it out but they sure think you are a super star at excel.
- More responsibility: Getting your work done faster on excel and impressing your team with your excel skills will mean that you will be a valuable resource and more and more work will come to you. In your early stages at work, this is very valuable as you often get insights in to areas of business that you would otherwise not get exposed to.
We are both professionals who use Excel on a daily basis, and hit new problems every day. We hope to share our learning by demonstrating actual situations we faced at work, and how we used Excel to solve it.
If you would like to recommend / learn different topics, please reach out to us. You feedback is valuable and is highly appreciated.
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