There are many analytical tools data analysts can include in their toolbox. Excel continues to be a common tool for many. Which Excel functions do you have experience using? Describe in detail how you used Excel for one of your analytical projects.

"As a data analyst, I have used Excel almost daily. It has become an essential tool in all phases of my analytical projects. I have used Pivot tables to check and clean data sets and analyze them. I have also used statistical functions to calculate standard deviations, correlation coefficients, percentiles, and quartiles in the analysis phase. In addition, I have used the graphing function in Excel to develop visual summaries of the data. For example, I regularly worked on customer satisfaction surveys and received raw data from external vendors. I would take this data, bring it into Excel, and use sort functions and pivot tables to verify the data was clean and loaded correctly. As part of the analysis phase, I always worked with pivot tables to segment the data. In addition, if the analysis called for it, I used the statistical functions I mentioned earlier. Building tables and graphs in Excel allowed me to tie my analyses together visually. I could often complete the tasks in one file, making everything I worked on easily accessible."

If you are an Excel expert, it would be challenging to list all the functions you have experience using. Instead, concentrate on highlighting the more difficult ones, particularly statistical functions. If you have experience utilizing the more challenging functions, Morningstar hiring managers will presume you have experience using the more basic ones. Be sure to highlight your pivot table skills and ability to create graphs in Excel. If you have not attained these skills yet, investing in training to learn them is worthwhile.