Excel is the foundation behind analyst jobs in finance, business, and marketing. It’s also a low-level useful tool for data analysts. Learning excel sets you up to head down any one of these career paths and there are even specific courses that show how each career uses Excel in their own specific ways.
Excel is necessary for positions in any of these fields, but on its own won’t get you the job. You will also need to learn the nuances of each industry, basic concepts for the industry of your choice, and soft skills in order to get a job.
Excel is the best analytical tool for roles in the finance industry. It has been the foundation of finance careers for over a decade now. It’s used financial analyses that inform investors’ decisions. Roles in finance –including Financial Analyst, Investment Banker, and Investment Analyst – will rely heavily on Excel daily.
Excel is also the first-choice tool for most Business Analysts. Business analysts often serve in a role that bridges the gap between the tech team and business stakeholders. They use Excel to analyze data to make business decisions, draw informed conclusions from those analyses, efficiently create reports, budget, and communicate their findings to both of the teams that they work with.
Excel is one of the most used tools for data analysis by marketers. Marketing teams use Excel to organize research and data for their campaigns, analyze the effectiveness of campaigns, forecast trends, and compile reports. Excel is an essential tool for jobs such as Marketing Analyst and Digital Analyst.
Excel plays a smaller role in data science jobs. While Excel was created to manage and manipulate data, it is often too small-scale to handle big data the way that professional Data Analysts require. It is, however, a great way to start understanding data, data analysis, data manipulation, functions, and efficiently transforming data.