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Excel interview practice

An Excel test for a job is often a small, realistic task: a workbook of sales, orders or invoices and a handful of questions to answer with formulas, sometimes against a clock. Tests differ by employer and by role, so no practice can promise to match yours. What carries over is the set of skills such tasks lean on, and being quick and accurate with them.

This page maps those skills to the free exercises on ExcelDrills and shows where the Premium work-style tasks fit. It covers formula skills. It does not cover PivotTables, charts or formatting, which some tests also ask for.

Skills these tasks lean on, and free practice for each

Totals and conditions

Many questions are variations of one idea: how much, how many, or what is the average for one region, product or period. Being fluent with conditional sums and counts saves a lot of time.

Lookups

Matching an ID to a name, a price or a rate is a staple. So is coping with an ID that is not in the list.

Decisions with IF

Bonus rules, thresholds and tiers turn a written policy into a formula. The skill is reading the rule carefully, including which side of a boundary counts.

Ranking and summarising

Who is first, who is second, what is typical, what share does each item bring in. These questions test whether you pick a sensible summary, not only whether you can calculate one.

Cleaning data

Imported data arrives with extra spaces, numbers stored as text and codes that need splitting. A test that starts with messy data rewards the person who cleans it first.

A short practice plan

  1. If any basics feel slow, start with the beginner path. Speed on references and totals pays off in every question.
  2. Work through totals and conditions, lookups and IF decisions first, in that order. Use the hints when you are stuck, and write down which ones you needed.
  3. Go back to the exercises where you used hints and do them again without help, against a timer you set yourself.
  4. Finish with ranking and summarising, then cleaning data, because a task can combine them with the earlier skills.
  5. When you are ready to practise a whole task in one workbook, try the Premium capstone below.

Common mistakes in timed tasks

Typing numbers into formulas
A number typed into a formula is right once. Some tests change the data to see whether your formulas still work, and a typed number will not follow it, so refer to cells.
Not checking the boundary
Greater than and greater than or equal to differ exactly at the limit. Read whether the limit itself qualifies.
Leaving errors on show, or hiding them with a zero
A stray error looks careless, and a silent zero can be wrong. Show a clear message where a missing value is expected.
Not locking references before copying down
A range that is not anchored slides as you copy the formula, and the last rows quietly return wrong numbers.
Answering a different question
Count of orders, count of customers and total value are different answers. Underline what is being asked before you write the formula.

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