Microsoft Excel is a comprehensive tool that allows businesses to record, track, and analyze data essential for measuring company performance, maximizing return on investment, and defining goals – when used to its fullest potential. A new employee who can comfortably navigate Excel is prepared to immediately contribute by producing meaningful, data-driven spreadsheets, reports, and graphs to best serve company needs.

Assessing a job candidate’s Microsoft Excel proficiency is an important step in making the right hire. The Beginners Microsoft Excel skills test is helpful in learning if a job candidate understands how to manipulate the many functions, tools, and formulas of Excel to present extensive information, identify key trends, or calculate financial and numerical data.

Microsoft Excel assessment test helps predict a job candidate’s ability to:

• Enter sales figures and properly apply formulas to generate sales totals by date, representative, product or region.
• Conditionally format cells with the goal of highlighting specific dates, values, or ranges.
• Create bar graphs and pie charts from large datasets to illustrate critical company data, performance metrics, and outlook.

An Interview Excel Test is a screening process employers use as part of the candidate employment interview to test a potential candidates’ Microsoft Excel skills. Depending on the position candidate is  applying for you are likely to face a pre-employment Excel test with varying level of difficulty. Microsoft Excel Employment Assessment tests can be categorized into at least three levels of testing:

• Microsoft Excel Basics Test: this test is used for those applying for administrative or clerical positions. The basic test will evaluate your skills performing basic Excel functions. This can include anything from printing, formatting cells, inserting tables, and so on. If you have used Excel in the past or familiar with other similar applications you should be able to refresh your skills with the quick tutorial, practice sample excel interview questions to pass assessment test. Basic Excel Test for Interview Candidates is a screening process for entry-level or experienced candidates, including administrative assistants, retail store managers, sales representatives, accountants, project managers, or any other position that requires using Microsoft Excel.
• Intermediate Microsoft Excel test:requires more than basic knowledge but is not as complex as the advanced level test. For this level you will need to study in advance. A basic understanding of Excel will not suffice. Intermediate Excel Test is typically offered to evaluate skills of Business Analysts, Project Managers, Architects and other professionals, that may be responsible for complex decision making but may not need to access advanced features of Excel
• The Advanced Excel test is for those that will need to use Excel in a more complex manner at their jobs. The test will evaluate your skills with pivot tables, creating macros, filtering, and functions such as IF, IFS, VLOOKUP, SUMIFS, VBA and other advanced concepts used in Microsoft Excel. Typically this test is offered to Senior Professionals, Executives, Financial Analysts, Scientists and other professionals that may need to use advanced features of Microsoft Excel

Important Considerations

• A lot of time interactive portion of the test might be easy when answering questions, since you will have access to the application and will be able to navigate around, try different things and validate your answers.
• Some companies will test candidates using custom built software. In this case it will often involve the use of the actual Excel software and will usually just be the interactive portion.
• Sometimes companies will send you a link and you might be able to take test from home. Even though it seems like an easier option these tests might be timed, and they might ask you to turn on the camera to observer your actions
• For a lot of interactive tests candidate will face a specifically designed software: unlike when taking a test with actual Excel, these interfaces do not auto correct spelling errors, allow for autofill of formulas, and allow for the use of some short cuts. Each question only has one answer, even if there are multiple ways to approach the problem.

Preparation. Understand what you need to know.

Typically, you are limited on time to get prepared and you can’t learn about all functionality available. The best way to study is to practice with the questions. No matter how much you study, you will likely encounter questions you have never seen any material. There are 2 types of preparation for the exam you need to consider

Excel Technology practice

• Step by step tutorial. One of the best ways to learn the application is to start doing something using it. There is a reason why employer wants to test candidates in Excel: it is because the person that will get hired will be using the application on the regular basis.
• Find a mentor. One of the fastest way to learn the technology is to find a mentor and together complete step by step creation of the Excel document, from start to finish. This mentor can be someone you know who already uses the Excel and can even be your High School or College student
• Follow Step by Step Tutorial. Using Step by Step tutorial you follow along and complete required steps in the application. The Tutorial can be an eBook, training course or step by step video guide. Once you completed the steps with tutorial, then you try to do it without the tutorial. This way you learn how to use to tool and can independently complete certain functions.
• Online Resources. There are a lot of videos and step by step tutorials available on the internet, but most of them have been designed for general purpose and are not geared for people, trying to pass Excel Test. Most of the candidates need materials that can help them get prepared quickly to master excel, specifically to pass Excel Assessment Test for Job Application
• eBook. One of the fastest way to learn is to use eBook that covers relevant material. The big advantage of eBook is that it allows you to focus on the topics you already know and skip ahead to learn topics that you need to master.
• Excel Training Course. One of the ways to improve your technical skills is to take excel training course. A lot of quality courses are available that would get you ready

Using Practice Test to prepare for an Exam

There are many benefits to utilizing practice tests, and adequately prepared for Excel Employment Assessment. With practice tests, students can get a feel for the types of questions they should expect to see during the test period, and they will also help them understand areas they need to improve on. After reviewing their practice test results, however, they can get a better sense of which areas are weakest, noted the User Interface, Navigation, Keyboard shortcuts or something else. Having this knowledge, they can then focus their efforts in a more productive manner.

Another huge benefit of taking practice tests is the familiarity of material. Using these study materials, students can get a feel for the layout and question types the exams will have and won't be as nervous when answering the actual questions. They will feel more self-assured because they will be used to reading and analyzing similar question structures.

Timed Excel Assessment Test can be a big problem for candidates who aren't used to having a strict time limit. By taking practice tests and knowing approximately how long it take for you to answer one question you can calculate allowable time and successfully plan your actual exam. With testing exercises, candidates can take their work home where they can time themselves as they work on questions. Doing these drills will allow students to understand how much time they have to spend on each problem. This way, they can adjust to the timing and be prepared for the final.