"As a data analyst, I have used Excel almost on a daily basis. It has become an essential tool for me in all phases of my analytical projects. I have used Pivot tables to check and clean data sets as well as analyze them. In the analysis phase, I have also used statistical functions to calculate standard deviations, correlation coefficients, percentiles, and quartiles. In addition, I have used the graphing function in Excel to develop visual summaries of the data. As an example, I regularly worked on customer satisfaction surveys and received raw data from external vendors. I would take this data and 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. Many times, I could complete the tasks in one file, making everything I worked on easily accessible."

If you are an Excel expert, it would be difficult 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, hiring managers will presume you have experience using the more basic ones. Be sure to highlight your pivot table skills, as well as your ability to create graphs in Excel. If you have not attained these skills yet, investing in training to learn them is worthwhile.