I have an interview next week with a boutique strategy consulting firm. Part of the interview will be an Excel test/exercise, and I'm wondering how I should prepare for it? What are some things I should definitely know how to do? What kind of questions/problems can I expect during the Excel test? Any additional insights on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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If they haven't given you any more guidance, you should definitely know how to use formulas and references and some basic charts, and if you have time, learn how to make pivot tables and pivot charts. Unless the job posting specified VBA or excel expertise, I don't think you'll have to code or create anything dynamic.
I've never had this kind of exercise, but I would suspect that part of the exercise might be to see how well you can work with data; that is, they give you a bunch of stuff and ask you to find something or create some sort of numerical presentation. I would be surprised if it were just things like "find the average of this column. Make a pivot table showing this data," etc.
You would or wouldn't be surprised?
Would. Not in the sense that I'd be surprised to see those skills tested, and not in the sense that I'd be surprised to see them make up the majority of the work, but I'd be moderately surprised if you just had a list of tasks to do. Like one of the above posters, I would expect there to be some big-picture goal, whether it's a model, deck, etc. That doesn't mean that you won't have guidance as to what they want; it just means that I expect that you'll have to think about the data at least a little bit.
Care to say the firm. You might be able to get some more specific advice that way.
For anonymity, I'd rather not. Even if someone gives me firm-specific advice for another firm, it'd still be helpful, since I honestly have no idea what they could throw my way.
Fair enough.
I did two excel tests for boutique consulting firms and they were both fairly similar.
The first one I was given about a six page power point presentation that was the "final product". In addition, they supplied an excel workbook with about 3-4 tabs of data and a powerpoint template. I was told to take the excel data and produce the "final product" all over again, making sure to save and detail all my work in excel (i.e. how I arrived at the "final product"). I was given 90 minutes to complete this and it took me about that long. There were unlimited ways one could sort through the data to arrive at the answer, but basically you just needed to do some pivot tables, some vlookups, etc. Show you are comfortable with managing large data sets and presenting the info.
The second one was very similar, I just didn't need to produce a final product.
Thanks guys. SBs for you (and anyone else who chimes in with some useful info).
Nanner for you for the generosity.
Never heard of a consulting firm testing Excel skills during an interview, but I imagine they will not only want to test your Excel skills, but also your logic/reasoning skills.
So you might get something like: "Here is a bunch of data. This is the problem. Your task is to find the relevant data points, crunch the numbers to find X, Y, Z (i.e. calculate annualized profit growth over a 10-year period, and they give you 10 years of data with sales, costs, etc), and then make a pretty chart out of it and give me a 30 second summary using your chart, recommending a solution to the problem and showing the potential effects of your solution in another chart."
Okay, I got you 2x2. At first, I thought it might of been a typo, but now I get what you're saying -- the actual Excel work will probably be finding averages, making charts, making pivot tables, etc., but on top of that, they'll be something more conceptual embedded in the Excel test. Right?
Thanks again guys, I really appreciate it.
Sure dude, good luck. Let us know what the test was like after you take it, this is an interesting situation.
One of the econ consulting places that I interviewed with had an excel component , but that's econ so make of if what you will.
Basically had about 40 mins, there was an excel spreadsheet with a few tabs, lots of data. There were a set of questions to answer with the data - some interpretation questions (what does this data tell you?), some conceptual ones, and running basic regression, doing simple calculations, making simple charts. Then format everything into a word document.
I think there was also a sections to catch mistakes in the excel spreadsheet - mainly things like wrong units, spelling errors, bad formatting.
consulting interview: Excel Screen (Originally Posted: 04/21/2014)
Hi there,
I'm in the final rounds for a boutique Strategy & Operations firm and have been told I will have an Excel screen as part of the process. I've searched previous topics and have found some interesting nuggets, but I wanted to see if I could get a little more color on what they may throw at me.
Just for a little background, I'm currently an analyst in the Corporate Strategy group at a F200. Also, I have completed BIWS Excel crash course.
If anyone could provide a bit more information as well as any worthwhile training courses/exercises I would really appreciate it.
Cheers
No experience with this but make sure you know how to create reports and graphs. A lot of us are experts in creating models and formulas and pivot tables but rarely turn them into graphs and charts.
I think it may be highly dependent on the level of the position you're actually applying for. In my interview for a similar department at a Big 4 firm (entry-level), I had 3 interviews in all but was only asked a grand total of 2 excel-related questions in just one of the interviews. Both questions had multiple ways of being addressed, and only required knowledge of simple vlookup/if-statement/concatenate. I would say not to worry too much, but my experience may differ from yours. PM me if you'd like me to elaborate on the specifics
Bump. Thanks guys, anyone else have advice?
Thanks in advance
I’d assume that it’ll be something like a few dense paragraphs that they’ll want you to put into a slick looking table and/or graph. I doubt they’ll ask you to display your macro prowess, but probably more interested in your attention to detail and formatting skills.
I'd also be aware of how long its taking you. If they don't give you a time frame to complete it in, that doesn't mean they aren't judging you on how long you're at the computer. Spend enough time getting it as close to perfect as possible, but realize when you've reached a point of diminishing return.
Never had this come up in an interview, so just my humble opinion.
Good luck, and let us know the details.
Hate to threadjack this - but what did you think about the BIWS course? Was it useful?
I went through a recruiting process with an Excel screen once for a tech company.
They gave me an Excel with hundreds of lines of data on products, pricing and sales and asked me to come up with an approach to identify products that had been mispriced. The key part was thinking through a logical approach- the actual Excel bit was easy once this was sorted (i.e., a few VLOOKUPs and some Pivot tables).
My hunch would be that this would be what they'd test- it's probably more useful for them to make sure you can think through a problem with numbers (which can't really be taught) vs. testing whether you know Excel formulae (which would be easy for you to learn once you start).
Just my two cents...
Hey guys, just wanted to let you know how it went...
Overall, very simple screen. They gave me a sample data set from a previous client and wanted me to break it apart into a few components. They wanted to see the vlookup/conditional formatting functionality and a general ability to synthesize data.
BIWS/Wall Street Prep's Excel course was way more than enough. Received an offer and have decided to take it.
Please let me know if you have any questions, either on this thread or a PM.
Thanks guys!
Congrats!
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