Why don't recent grads know how to use excel?
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There are extremes. While some struggle with excel and PowerPoint, others (liberal arts, and business) can code in C#, Python, SQL, Solidity, and leverage PowerBI effectively.
Over the years, after being frustrated of teaching basics, I find myself building training decks across various disciplines I consider 101. Helps me articulate and consistently deliver minimum quality training to bring up my analysts / associates.
Yet if a certain skill is critical, run that as part of your interview process. Had various surprises when I baked such items into a structured interview, an engineer had more appreciation of bank capital than many of my full time junior staff, a history major understood the nuance of correlated risk through reading “too-big-to-fail”.
I thought that I was a try hard for keeping a running list of excel short cuts / formula explanations etc to share with my junior analysts
You sound dope af 😂 manager goals
Liberal arts college grad here - the only reason I was semi proficient at excel out of undergrad is because I was a TA and had to help the professor track class grades.
Context is key. A class on how to use excel isn't worth as much as having to figure out how to use excel to make your life easier for actual work.
I agree with Strategic Business Manager 1!!! I get stuck on the basics of rows and columns so I never get to building 😒 Not all instructors teach Excel the same. I've learned more from coworkers than in an actual classroom. I don't use it in my daily job, but I'm starting a cleaning business and it would be nice to be able to track my clients and staff. Or! There's an app for that! Clueless. Michele (Ohio)
I asked for direction on excel from a professor once and he looked at me like an alien. Got some from another but mostly self taught in my own time.
If a student gets their hand on some meaningful info and applies it in context they normally pick it up rapidly. Met a guy who had about twenty years on me in Banking and he was much better at excel but he sucked at maths, he won't mind me saying, so it was an exchange when we worked together.
Right?!? I get why they maybe don’t know PowerPoint but to it know what a cell is?!!
As somebody who has a background in science, who shifted to finance, i would agree that there are many classes where they just aren’t taught. They are given some simple
Models or charting to do. And they often times rather do something simply than use the full capabilities.
Some of the biggest gaps I see is the use of the logic aspect of functions. I’ve been working in marketing for the past 2 years in my company and god forbid you just don’t use a worksheet to do some modeling
My 3 know how. Want fight?
They had to have learned it at some point in college. They just need to see how it’s applied and in a way that makes sense. Once you open the their minds, all sorts of nonsense comes out but it gets them to remember their classes.
I assure you I did not learn it in college. I do know someone who went to Towson who told me they offered an excel certification class for one credit
Our business school drilled that **** into our heads
When I was in school (which, tbh, was 10 years ago now lmao), most of these classes were elective. We did have 1 info systems class that had a basic excel assignment, but 1) at the time, I had no idea of the significance and that wasn't really emphasized and 2) I'm pretty sure most people did the bare minimum and gleaned the rest from the TA.
So I definitely learned most of what I know now on the job. I also have created informal courses for others (even created a formal course but that was years ago and it's probably not the best.)
I'd love to learn more advanced stuff, but now I've grown old and infirmed. I...I'm ancient now. I'm different. I'm older. I'm peaceful. I'm an old hag. I've given up on learning new tools.
Excel is often regarded as a lesser tool... which is unfortunate because it can be very powerful.
Graduating in what, though? 2013 Applied Mathematics and I never touched Excel a single time.
I graduated undergrad 3 years ago with a management info systems degree and the tech classes I took were excel, MySQL, Salesforce, Java, HTML, and CSS. The few programming classes I took were all Java which seemed kind of backwards given the rising popularity in python.
Had like a 5week course on it in my Accounting classes but honestly it’s so hard actually applying it because you’re not using it everyday. You’re only exposed to what it can do. Can’t really truly learn it unless you’re using it everyday.
How big is your recent grad sample for you to make this statement?
Perhaps they haven’t had an personal or professional application to use it.