A lot of people don’t find using Excel particularly enjoyable. It’s just another tool they have to use as part of their day’s work.
For this reason, the idea of spending additional time learning how to get better at it might seem very off putting.
But spending a bit of time (and I genuinely mean a bit – even a few hours can make an enormous difference) can really help you out.
Here’s why you should get better at Excel.
1. Using Excel is unavoidable
Ok, well maybe it’s not unavoidable for every profession. But if you’re doing a job that is even partially desk/office based you’ll probably be using Excel at least every now and then.
Think about it. Sales, admin and office support, marketing, engineering, finance, HR, IT – these are just a selection of the careers/roles where you’ll undoubtedly be using Excel.
2. It will make your job more enjoyable
If you’re good at something, you’ll enjoy it more. It might seem odd to say that Excel can be fun, but many people would disagree!
When you have a good number of functions under your belt and can use features like Pivot tables and Goal Seek you’ll start to see data as your friend rather than your enemy!
3. You’ll be able to help your colleagues
For every person who learns Excel, there will be plenty more who should but don’t.
Being the go-to Excel person in the office will give you the satisfaction of helping your coworkers and help make you stand out!
4. It will help grow your career
Many job specifications will not only mention “Excel” as a required skill, but they’ll even include knowledge of specific functions and features (e.g. VLOOKUP, PivotTables etc.) as requirements or “nice to haves” for job roles.
Having Excel skills can therefore help get you a new, better job.
5. It doesn’t take long to learn Excel
Sure, mastering Excel takes a long time. It’s an incredibly powerful piece of software, and it has a virtually endless amount of features and functions.
But learning Excel to the point where you understand all the day-to-day essentials for many jobs (cell formatting, writing formulas and basic functions, PivotTables etc.) Is something you can do in a few hours.
Yep, that’s right. Even if you have no prior experience of using Excel you can pick up many of the basics over a couple of evenings.