what excel skills do i need to start my consulting internship

Hi,

Depending on whether it is an MBA / Grad internship. For an MBA internship you are expected to know both basics and advanced:

Basics

• Fast excel - throw away your mouse and put some tape on your touchpad. Do everything with your keyboard!
• The main formulas (especially vlookup, column, etc)
• Pivot tables
• Nice formating
• Modeling - you need at least to know how to structure your sheets (Inputs, outputs, sources, versions, etc)

Advanced skills include:

• Financial modeling (making proforma statement)
• Valuation of projects / companies

Best!

Dear A,

It would be helpful for you to learn the business-focused Excel features.

In business, about 80% of your work will come from 20% of the functionality of the Microsoft Excel.

The core skills of a competent business Excel user are something like:

• Formatting & basic formulas
• Mouse-free Excel navigation
• Vlookups & conditional statements
• Data analysis - filtering, sorting, and analyzing data
• Data visualization - tables, charts, and dual axis charts
• What-if-analysis
• Pivot tables

If you can do these things, you’ll outperform 95% of people in the workplace.

To learn these concepts, you could:

• Learn the concepts online for free
• Take an online course

If you’re looking for something free, I’d recommend Googling & Youtube-ing those topics on my list. Tons of free material online. On Udemy you can also find some courses.

If you’re short on time, take a short business-focused online course.

I’d recommend the following business-focused course focused on mastering the 20% of functions that make up 80% of Excel work.

Best,

André