Why Excel Skills are the Key to Landing Your Dream Job: Tips for Showcasing Your Expertise on Your CV
Excel is an application whose usage is vast, and once you start learning it, you will understand there are hundreds of features in there that you can learn.
Now the biggest question is, when you learn it and master some of its major features and options, how can you show it in your resume or cv? There are three primary levels of Excel skills that you can attain:
- Basic
- Intermediate
- Advanced
Most Excel users use these three levels to define their skills in their resumes. But, if you consider understanding, these levels don't accurately represent your skills.
Then what's the right way to mention my Excel skills in the resume?
It's not about how much you know Microsoft Excel, how can you help your company and its business with it.
And below are five prominent ways to use Excel to help your company that you can mention in your CV.
(1). I Can Manage and Structured the Data
Everything starts with the data. And that's why knowing how to manage data with Excel is important. You can describe how well you can manage the data in your resume.
Let's say you have a lot of Excel files with data, and now, you need to combine data from all those files. Now this needs you to know how to do this with Excel. The best way for this is to use the Power Query or VBA.
(2). I Can Clean and Transform the Data to use it Further
One of the significant needs of a business is to have clean and ready-to-use data. And these are skills that you need to master and mention in your CV about it.
For this, you need to know the formula, functions and power query. Both can help you to transform raw data into ready-to-use data for reports and dashboards.
(3). I Can Present Data in a Visual form with Charts and Infographics
Creating charts is one of the best and most powerful ways to present your data. In Excel, you have a long list of pre-defined charts and even infographics that you can create.
There are also many options in Excel to customize the charts, like changing style and adding and removing the chart elements. Excel also allows you to copy and paste your chart to another application and save it as an image.
(4). I Can Create Reports & Dashboards to Help to make Better Decisions
One of the most essential skills that you can have been to create reports and dashboards from the data that you have in Excel. With reports and dashboards, you can help others get insights and help the business to make better decisions.
Pivot Tables are a vital component of creating a report in Excel. It helps you to summarize data in no time, and these are dynamics, which means once you add new data to the source, you can update it in the pivot with a single click.
(5). I Can Automate Excel Activities with VBA to Save Time
In Excel, you can write codes and automate your activities. Like, you can create a Pivot table with a single click. And if you know how to write codes and automate things, you can mention it in your resume.
Automation with VBA can help your company to save a lot of money, as they don't need to hire a programmer or automation expert. Knowing VBA is a super skill to add to your Excel knowledge.