How Excel Skills Testing Can Help You Increase Productivity

Microsoft Excel has evolved into an essential business tool since it was introduced in 1985. Employees use Excel spreadsheets to prepare payroll, create budgets and sales forecasts and organize customer and prospect lists. It streamlines and simplifies many business processes because it is easy to use and learn, and because it offers robust functionality. It is important that employees and new hires know how to use Excel correctly and efficiently. Therefore, Excel skills testing is essential for employees who work on projects in areas such as the following.

Finance & Accounting - Excel spreadsheets are essential for creating budgets and sales forecasts because the mathematical formulas enable employees to perform calculations in seconds when it used to take hours. Besides basic functions such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, it is possible to use Excel to figure averages and percentages, calculate prices, interest rates and yields, and even create custom formulas. So, it is important to be sure employees know how to use these functions if they will be doing this type of work.

Marketing & Sales - Although marketing and sales professionals normally rely on the accounting staff for financial analyses, they use Excel spreadsheets for sales- and marketing-related projects. For example, they can develop a marketing strategy or sales forecast using information they have compiled in Excel spreadsheets, and a pivot table can be used to summarize sales data by region or product categories. Therefore, it makes sense for an employment test cover these Excel skills for an employee who will doing this type of work.

Human Resources - Database systems such as Oracle, SAP, and QuickBooks can be used to manage the payroll. However, the data is often exported into Excel so it is easier to review and identify trends. For example, viewing payroll information on a spreadsheet would make it possible to see which employees are due for a pay raise, show which hourly employees are accepting the most overtime, and see which departments or shifts are incurring the most costs. An understanding of the Excel functions that are required to do this type of work would be necessary for employees who work in these areas.

If general or specialized knowledge of Excel spreadsheets is essential for employees in your organization, you should consider including an employment test that includes an Excel skills assessment in your recruitment process to ensure you are hiring people who have the required skills.