Jobs That Require Excel and the Level Each One Needs

Jobs that require Excel are everywhere in offices: admin, customer service, sales, HR, accounting, operations, project work, finance and data analysis all use spreadsheets. What changes from job to job is the level you need. This guide is for job seekers who want to know which roles use Excel, what each one actually does with it, and how to check whether your own skills are ready.

Which jobs require Excel?#

Almost any job that works with lists, numbers or reports uses Excel in some way. The difference is how much. A receptionist may keep a visitor log. A financial analyst may build a model with hundreds of linked formulas.

It helps to think in three levels, the same ones explained in Excel proficiency levels: basic, intermediate and advanced:

• Basic: enter and edit data, sort, filter, format, and write simple formulas such as SUM and AVERAGE.
• Intermediate: answer questions from a table with lookups (VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP), conditional totals (SUMIF, COUNTIF), IF, $ references and pivot tables.
• Advanced: build models, clean messy data at scale, use INDEX MATCH, FILTER, SUMPRODUCT and tools like Power Query.

Jobs that require Excel, by level#

This table shows common roles, what they typically use Excel for, and the level most ads for that role ask for. Real jobs vary, so always read the ad itself.

For a role-by-role breakdown, see the guides to Excel skills for admin jobs, Excel skills for HR jobs and Excel skills for finance jobs.

Basic-level jobs: entering and tidying data#

Basic-level jobs need you to keep data accurate and easy to read. Typical tasks are:

• Typing and editing records without breaking the layout.
• Sorting a list by date or name, and filtering it to show one status.
• Totals and averages with SUM and AVERAGE, and filling a formula down a column.
• Formatting numbers as currency or dates, and printing a sheet that fits the page.

If you can do these quickly and without help, you're at a solid basic level. The basics skill check lesson asks you to fix, calculate, fill and format a supplier order on your own, which is a good test of exactly this level.

Intermediate-level jobs: lookups, totals and pivot tables#

Intermediate is the level most office jobs mean when they say "good Excel skills". You answer questions from a table instead of just storing it. Three skills come up again and again.

Lookups. Bring a price, a name or a manager from another table. With product codes in column A and prices in column C:

=VLOOKUP(F2,A2:C50,3,FALSE)

This finds the code in F2 and returns the value from the third column. FALSE means exact match, which is what you want almost every time. The VLOOKUP function guide explains each argument. XLOOKUP does the same job more simply, but it needs Excel 2021 or Microsoft 365.

Conditional totals. Add up only the rows that match. On the expense list in this article's exercise:

=SUMIF(A2:A8,"Sales",C2:C8)

This returns 655 (420 + 85 + 150), the total of the Sales department's expenses. The SUMIF function guide covers the criteria rules.

Pivot tables. Summarise a long list in a few clicks: total sales by region, count of tickets by agent. A pivot table is a summary table that Excel builds for you from a list, and you can rearrange it by dragging fields.

The intermediate Excel skills list has the full set, with a small task for each.

Advanced-level jobs: models and messy data#

Advanced-level jobs need you to build things other people rely on. Financial analysts build forecasts and models where one changed input flows through many formulas. Data and business analysts take messy exports and turn them into clean, repeatable reports.

Typical advanced skills include INDEX MATCH and two-way lookups, FILTER, UNIQUE and SORT (Excel 2021 or Microsoft 365), SUMPRODUCT, financial functions such as NPV and PMT, and Power Query for repeatable cleaning. The guide to advanced Excel skills for jobs explains what employers usually mean by "advanced".

You don't need every advanced skill for every analyst role. Ads usually name the tools they care about, such as "financial modelling" or "Power Query".

How to tell what level a job ad means#

The words in a job ad are often vague. "Proficient in Excel" can mean basic in one company and advanced in another. Read the duties instead:

1. "Maintain records", "data entry", "update trackers" usually means basic.
2. "Prepare reports", "reconcile", "analyse sales data", "pivot tables", "VLOOKUP" usually means intermediate.
3. "Build models", "forecasting", "automate reports", "Power Query", "large datasets" usually means advanced.

Then match the duties to your own skills. The Excel skills checklist lets you tick off what you can already do. When you write your application, the guide to listing Excel skills on a resume shows how to describe your level honestly, with examples instead of labels.

How employers check your Excel skills#

Many employers don't take "advanced Excel" on a resume at face value. They check. Common ways are:

• A short online test before or after the interview, sometimes multiple choice and sometimes in a live spreadsheet. The guide to the Indeed Excel assessment shows one common format.
• A practical task during the interview, such as "total sales by region" or "look up these prices".
• Questions about how you'd do something, like "how would you find duplicates?"

The safest preparation is to do real tasks under time pressure. Start with the Excel level test to see where you stand, then try the basic Excel test or the intermediate Excel test for the level your target job needs.

Practise it#

The fastest way to qualify for more jobs that require Excel is to move from basic to intermediate. Practise VLOOKUP in a live spreadsheet: you type the formula and it checks it instantly. Then build your first pivot table and try the SUMIF exercise on this page. If you're not sure where to start, take the basics skill check first.