What are best Excel interview questions? [survey]

Hello folks…

Time for a fun & useful survey. This time lets talk about Excel Interview Questions.

Many of you are silently becoming awesome in Excel, data analysis, charting, dashboard reporting, VBA, Power Pivot and business skills, thanks to all the time you spend on Chandoo.org. I am sure there will be a day in near future, when you have to face another interview and be selected for a challenging, fun & high paying role.

Likewise, there is also a significant portion of you who are too good in your job that you will become a senior manager, VP or CXO, or better still start your own business. When the tables have turned, you will be the one looking for smart, dedicated, talented and fun individuals to join your team and make you look even more awesome.

So my question for both prospective interviewees and wannabe Excel pros,

According to you, what are the best Excel interview questions?

I will go first.

My top 5 Excel interview questions

Assuming I am looking for an analyst who can take any data dumped at her and turn it in to insights, actionable statements or management summaries, I will ask her below questions for sure.

1. How do you lookup particular items from a large data set? Discuss various approaches, why they work, where they fail using this example data set.
2. Can you make this ugly, confusing model in to usable, simple & elegant one?
3. Assuming you have sales data of various products in several regions over the last 36 months, what kind of charts you prepare to help us understand what is going on and where we should focus?
4. Can you analyze the same sales data using pivot tables. Can you compare pivot analysis with formula approach and comment?
5. How well do you know about our business? Can you create a high level model of how we make money in Excel? After I explain how we make money in words of course.
6. Bonus question: Which resources you use to keep yourself ahead of others in this position. (websites, books, training programs etc.)

What about you?

Go ahead and share your best interview questions. Use your experience as an interviewer or interviewee.  Click below link.

Take up Excel interview questions survey.

Have an interview coming up soon?

Then brush up your skills. Start with these pages and let your curiosity go wild.

• Excel for beginners
• Advanced Excel Skills
• Top 10 formulas for aspiring Excel pros
• How to create charts for any situation?
• Comprehensive guide to Pivot Tables