What constitutes an “Excel Power User”?

[MarkAndrews]

I find it amusing as some of them are quite bigheaded with the vlookup thing, especially on the phone to colleagues and other companies

It’s incredible how dangerous a little VLOOKUP knowledge can be to the uninitiated!! Granted, it was the first step I took towards realising the real power of Excel, however, it does seem to make people suddenly think that they are experts!!

I had a temp come in at work the other week to help me out with some backlog stuff. I gave her a spreadsheet to do a bit of analysis on and before I’d even explained fully what I wanted her to do, I was hit with “Could we do a VLOOKUP here?”. The tone of her voice was definitely one of “I’m trying to impress you here and I’m hoping that by using the word VLOOKUP I might confuse you”. As if!! I proceeded to create a simple Pivot Table and that wiped the smile off her face. I’m not normally one for shunning anyone who shows a genuine interest in learning Excel and I’m more than willing to help. But when people start to get arrogant about it, I think they do have to be put in their place.

When I read this I laughed till it hurt!

It is so true Lewiy!!

Like you I am more than willing to teach anyone anything about Excel, but it does make me laugh when people try and impress people with certain functions, especially as I tend to find that most of them know about the formula but cant actually do the syntax themselves

 

[Boller]

A useful question to ascertain a person's "familiarity" with Excel is : "what do you do if there is something you want to do in Excel but don't know how to do it?"

If the answer is that the situation never arises, the person obviously knows nothing about Excel and is doing nothing to change his/her lack of knowledge.

I would give considerable weight to a prospective employee who would do this ad seriatim :-

1. Look in the help file
2. Do a search of MSKB
3. Search the WWB

 

[KevH]

I would give considerable weight to a prospective employee who would do this ad seriatim :-

1. Look in the help file
2. Do a search of MSKB
3. Search the WWB

Semi-related to the topic...

Out of curiosity... How would you respond if the prospective employee told you the following?

Google reports MSKB as "MS KnowledgeBase" which caused me to go "duh". Google then reported WWB as "Women's World Banking" which caused me to retry with "WWB excel" and search on MrExcel. I'm punting back to you after seeing "Warehouse Workbench" and nothing respectively.

:P

Even more semi-related to the topic, thanks to everyone here fo letting me mostly lurk and become less of Novice and more of an Intermediate.

 

[NateO]

Now, everyone puts down “yeah, I’m a high-level user of all Microsoft products, etc, etc...” even if they’re not, so that’s not good enough. But would I be justified in using the term “power user”?

I just put down "I got illz skillz, dawg."

Actually, looking at my resume, it appears that I have the following:

Computer skills include familiarity with all Office Applications including expertise with Microsoft Access and advanced expertise with Microsoft Excel

And I attach an Appendix of historical, advanced Excel projects at the end, e.g., interfacing Excel with Lotus Notes, Advanced Web Queries, Forecasting Models, etc... Kind of at a high level, i.e., what was the concept of the project and what was the outcome.

Hmmm, it appears that my Appendix doesn't include any specific mention to "V-Lookups" or "Macros". It looks like I might be selling myself short here...

 

[Boller]

Out of curiosity... How would you respond if the prospective employee told you the following?

Google reports MSKB as "MS KnowledgeBase" which caused me to go "duh". Google then reported WWB as "Women's World Banking" which caused me to retry with "WWB excel" and search on MrExcel. I'm punting back to you after seeing "Warehouse Workbench" and nothing respectively.

Immediate termination of interview. No sense in employing a smart-***.

 

[NateO]

It's probably better to employ a smart-**** then a dumb-****. :wink:

 

[Boller]

It's probably better to employ a smart-**** then a dumb-****. :wink:

But much better to employ neither.

 

[KevH]

Immediate termination of interview. No sense in employing a smart-****.

Yowza!

Fair enough, I guess.

On my way out can you tell me a bit more about "WWB"? All kiding aside I'm really not sure what that is.

 

[Greg Truby]

I took Boller's reference to simply be a typo, i.e. shoulda been WWW = the World Wide Web. Perhaps I misinterpreted and there really is a WWB? I rather doubt it; but I have been wrong before...

 

[barry houdini]

I took Boller's reference to simply be a typo, i.e. shoulda been WWW = the World Wide Web. Perhaps I misinterpreted and there really is a WWB? I rather doubt it; but I have been wrong before...

Isn't it some sort of wrestling organisation.....?