Best way to improve technical skills (excel/Argus)

Hello all,

Im a prospect in CRE looking towards roles in capital markets/ investment sales, and I'm starting my senior year of undergrad this coming fall. 

With the job search process coming up, I want to continue to hone my technical skills in excel/Argus/underwriting in general. I have worked and am currently working as a summer analyst for a major shop (JLL/CBRE/Cushman). Although these are great learning experiences, the summer interns aren't trusted to carry out much of the underwriting process and instead are expected to do more "observing".

I was wondering if anyone on here had some valuable information or sources as to how I can improve my skills and become a strong job candidate come interview time.

2 Comments
 
Most Helpful

Spend hours going through the models of the shop your interning at. Understand how they're built, what the drivers are, etc.

Then once you're comfortable with that, try and recreate them (on a more simplistic, deal-specific basis) to see if you can get your model to arrive at the same results. From there, play with different inputs in the two models side by side to make sure things flow through correctly.

If you have strong baseline excel skills, its really just a matter of exposing yourself to models more and more frequently. Focus on depth, not speed. Speed comes with time.

 

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