What are your top-of-mind questions to understand if a person has Basic Excel skill?

[mfexcel]

Well, I know it's debatable to define "Basic", "Intermediate", "Advance" in using Excel...

The fact is there are many people claiming that they are "Advanced in Excel" but don't know how to do some basic stuff like input date in excel.

My top-of-mind question is:
How to input date correctly in Excel?

What's yours?

 

[Weaver]

I like your thinking on this, since bad date entry can cause so much pain with data.

I don't think my question would be as straighforward, but I'd ask for an explanation/demonstration of pivot table use.

When we're hiring, I have a workbook with some test questions in it, which I get candidates to complete

 

[Comfy]

Q1. Are you a Microsoft MVP
A.Yes = Advanced user.
B. No = move to questions 2

Q2. Do you use Array formula, pivot tables and or VBA regularly?
A.Yes = Intermediate user.
B. No or don't know = basic user.

 

[Kyle123]

Explain Vlookup and demonstrate how to use a pivot table, I also test to see if they have any idea about how to lay a workbook out. I find that a key difference between novices and intermediate users upwards is how they structure data, novices have a tendency to split related data into logical tabs whereas intermediate users use the same table but use categories as it makes the data easier to work with

In contrast to the above, I'd class array formulas as advanced rather than intermediate

 

[mfexcel]

Agree! And I believe that can go further from Basic Array to Advanced Array too.

In contrast to the above, I'd class array formulas as advanced rather than intermediate

 

[Fazza]

Like Kyle, data structure is a good indicator to me.

Array formulas to me mean users may not know the best approaches. Array formulas are bad for the large datasets I work with & would indicate to me that users don't know how to work smart with large datasets.

Advanced users to me would need to be competent VBA programmers able to create just about anything required, and, interact with other applications,

 

[mfexcel]

to me, this is Expert!

Advanced users to me would need to be competent VBA programmers able to create just about anything required, and, interact with other applications,

 

[BiocideJ]

One of the best ideas I ever saw was on a job interview test I took. It may be a bit more broad and abstract than your question, but I think it was one of the best ways to actually screen a candidate's Excel skill.

There were several tabs with varying sets of data and on each tab there was a formula that was intending to accomplish a task that was stated on the sheet.
The 'trick' was that all of the formulas had something wrong with them. For instance wrong Formula given, formula missing an argument, referencing wrong cells, array formula not CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER confirmed, etc.

The time limit on the test was relatively short, but it quickly gave insight into both how well the candidate understood Excel AND how they were at problem solving.



... I got the job

 

[Joe4]

Array formulas to me mean users may not know the best approaches. Array formulas are bad for the large datasets I work with & would indicate to me that users don't know how to work smart with large datasets.

Agreed! I rarely use Array Formulas and Pivot Tables. When it starts moving in that direction, I usually stop using Excel and use Access instead, a program meant to handle relational databases!

 

[steve case]

Well, I know it's debatable to define "Basic", "Intermediate", "Advance" in using Excel...

The fact is there are many people claiming that they are "Advanced in Excel" but don't know how to do some basic stuff like input date in excel.

My top-of-mind question is:
How to input date correctly in Excel?

What's yours?

I positively despise Excel's date function. I download data from the net and Excel decides some of them are dates, and it really gets tedious to find them and correct them.

I enter dates in the format YYYYMMDDHH.xx

I've never used hours and tenth's of an hour or finer but that's how I would do it.