I give folks an excel test. It’s more of a very basic modeling test as I provide some data and tell them what I want from it and see how they get to the answer. They do it in our office on our PC and access to the internet for help.
I’ve been giving it to candidates for over 15 years now. And seen some awful stuff out of it. Some people just spend an hour building 14 different pivot tables and never write a formula. I think it’s very easy but only about 10% of people do well on it. It’s not meant to be tricky either, like one question is “write a SUMIFS on the data table to determine X, Y, Z” and you can tell most people fumble with giving the formula the correct parameters or in the right order. This is a major red flag for me as a Financial Analyst, even if they don’t use that formula often, should be able to understand the instructions Excel is giving you OR use a search engine to figure it out in just a couple minutes.
On the SUMIFS problem, we tell them exactly which formula to use because we noticed early on if we didn’t then people would just say they had no answer, or not sure how to approach the problem.
Worth noting, I only ever interview people with minimum 2 years actual work experience as a Financial Analyst (Also managers, directors, VPs. Everyone gets tested). Also, it’s become better over time. I think colleges are pushing excel literacy as part of the curriculum more than they used to.
I’ve been giving it to candidates for over 15 years now. And seen some awful stuff out of it. Some people just spend an hour building 14 different pivot tables and never write a formula. I think it’s very easy but only about 10% of people do well on it. It’s not meant to be tricky either, like one question is “write a SUMIFS on the data table to determine X, Y, Z” and you can tell most people fumble with giving the formula the correct parameters or in the right order. This is a major red flag for me as a Financial Analyst, even if they don’t use that formula often, should be able to understand the instructions Excel is giving you OR use a search engine to figure it out in just a couple minutes.
On the SUMIFS problem, we tell them exactly which formula to use because we noticed early on if we didn’t then people would just say they had no answer, or not sure how to approach the problem.
Worth noting, I only ever interview people with minimum 2 years actual work experience as a Financial Analyst (Also managers, directors, VPs. Everyone gets tested). Also, it’s become better over time. I think colleges are pushing excel literacy as part of the curriculum more than they used to.