Basic Excel skills for a Data Analyst / Business Analyst- Beginners

 Well, this is for the users who want to grow in their career as data analysts or business analysts or if they simply want to make a career transition to this role.

With a lot of skills mentioned everywhere, this gets confusing for people to concentrate on what should they specifically learn if they want to grow as an analyst or if they want to make a transition to this role.

In this blog, I will simply mention a few important skills that helped me move from a career which was far far different from a business analyst role to transition into a business analyst role in a leading e-commerce firm.

Among all the hi-fi terminologies that you might have heard of - Python, Pandas, Numpy, Regression, Machine Learning, Modelling and the list goes on and on, the most important of them all is Excel. If you have a command over excel you can do wonders at your job. Not only this, when you learn how to play with the data on excel, all the hi-fi terminologies I mentioned before would seem easier to you when you start learning them.

So, without wasting anymore time, lets get straight to the point. Get yourself well versed with the following topics in Excel to kick start your career to the next level

For Basic understanding

1. Data Formats- Learn about the different types of format ex. number, date, time, text

2. Advanced Filtering and sorting techniques

3. Data Formatting: Normal color formatting, Rule/condition based,gradient based etc

4. Charts and graphs: Line Charts, Bar charts, Scatter plot, Histogram plot etc

5. Important Excel Formulas:

    Sumif, Sumifs, countif, countifs, average, If , vlookup, hlookup, match, And, or

6. Pivot: Normal pivot techniques, Pivot based on grouped rows/columns, power pivot

In my later blogs, I will talk in detail on how to learn these skills. what the sources that could help and other bonus concepts

Thanks for now. See you in the next blogs :)