Someone with basic Excel knowledge is able to make use of the tools in the Home, Page Layout, and View tabs. How to test basic Excel skillsįor most companies, basic Excel functions cover the core features of Microsoft Excel. Here’s a breakdown of how to design a skills assessment to understand how your job applicants stack up. It depends on the role for which you are hiring, the industry you’re in, and if there are other employees who have compatible skills on your team already. For instance, some consider pivot tables to be relatively intermediate. Excel assessments vary depending on which skills are considered intermediate vs. As you write your job descriptions, think about how your open role will be competing against potential employers who may well be outside of your industry.Įxcel skills can be categorized as beginner (or basic), intermediate and advanced. Administrative assistants, office clerks, and sales managers can find jobs in many different companies. Job TitleĪs you can see, many of these jobs are industry agnostic. Advanced Excel experience is only required for niche positions, such as an economist or data analyst.ĬareerKarma compiled a list of some of the best jobs that use Excel in 2022, as well as the market outlook for hiring these roles. Virtually every industry needs workers with basic Excel skills one study found that Excel skills are required for 82% of middle-skill positions. Employees with certified Excel skills can earn 12% higher than non-certified ones, and are more likely to get promoted, according to go skills What roles require Excel skills? From this shortlist, the potential employer can prioritize those candidates who have the specific skills they need to be successful in the role. Ideally, the hiring manager would integrate an Excel skills test early in the hiring process to create a shortlist of candidates. Instead, Excel tests can be used to rank candidates on basic Excel functions and to verify a candidate’s ability to complete advanced analysis.įrom there, hiring managers can use a job interview to ask for detailed explanations on how a user would use Excel to be successful in the business. There’s no easy way to test Excel skills in an interview. Recruiters often struggle to test for Excel skills during the hiring process. In fact, people with certified Excel skills are more likely to get promotions and earn 12% more than non-certified users. While programming languages and marketing skills change regularly, professionals who invest in learning Excel can feel secure that the efficacy of this tool is unlikely to change. Companies in virtually every industry seek employees with the knowledge required to format spreadsheets, create charts, and perform advanced analysis in this ever-popular program.
In the Order list, select the order that you want to apply to the sort operation - alphabetically or numerically ascending or descending (that is, A to Z or Z to A for text or lower to higher or higher to lower for numbers).įor more information about how to sort data, see Sort data in a range or table .Microsoft Excel has been on the market for nearly 40 years, and yet candidates with Excel skills are continuously in demand. In the Sort On list, select either Values, Cell Color, Font Color, or Cell Icon. In the Sort by list, select the first column on which you want to sort. On the Data tab, in the Sort & Filter group, choose Sort. Select a single cell anywhere in the range that you want to sort. Select a single cell in the column on which you want to sort.Ĭlick to perform an ascending sort (A to Z or smallest number to largest).Ĭlick to perform a descending sort (Z to A or largest number to smallest). The range can include titles that you created to identify columns or rows. Select a range of data, such as A1:L5 (multiple rows and columns) or C1:C80 (a single column).