Might seem like a silly question but anyone have reference material and/or a list for specific Excel skills that are indispensable on day/week/project one? Starting as a BA by end of month and want to get a head start learning useful skills. If there are non-Excel things I should pick up now, please list those too!

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Familiarize yourself with basic functions: vlookup, index match, countifs, sumifs, trim, pivot tables

Learning shortcuts would be the next step. It'll cut down a lot of time with formatting

Do the same for powerpoint

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Useful exercise for OP: just hide your mouse and try to work on a sheet only using keys. Use Alt to see if you can figure it out or if not use your phone to Google the shortcut. It’ll be slow and tedious for a few hours as you get acquainted, but well worth it in the long run, you’ll eventually move so fast and save so much time and be the envy of all your boomer or liberal arts coworkers

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Learn to code VBA if you want to be an overachiever and be laughed at for trying too hard (from experience)

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There is a book called Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling I would recommend. It has practice problems and starter projects. Goes over a lot of cool stuff. Beyond pivot tables, vlookup, countif, etc. learn how to use macros and vba in practical ways. Look up analytics/stats skills in excel, modeling, or project management in it..just what you think you’ll use in your practice

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I will say though, I was like you eager to get started last year when I began, but I didn’t heavily use excel until 6 months in. A lot of the scenarios weren’t “routine” like you may find practice problems for, you just kinda are given the scenario and you try to figure out what they’re looking for. Your manager or senior associate will probably help you if you have questions or critique the doc for improvements. Don’t stress too much, you will learn way more on the job than you can through a course or book a month before you start. Enjoy your last moments of freedom before beginning this new chapter in life!

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Also curious! Will be starting one soon myself

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Apart from Excel, it would help if you also learned some languages like R and Python.

SQL and Tableau/PowerBI may be more useful and easier to learn on a tighter schedule. Python would be secondary importance, then R last. If you have limited time it’s better to pick between R or Python and get really good at one then move to the other. Python is growing in popularity, is easier to learn, and may have more use cases as R is largely used for stats. Access and Visio are good to have passing familiarity with as well imo. But it all depends on what you’re actually doing in your service line/job function/engagement workstream

Really though as an associate you’ll be using PowerPoint a lot so figuring out how to do things quickly in it is probably most helpful lolololol

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