1-Day Excel Interview Prep Plan: How to Master Key Skills Overnight

—

by

Himanshu
in

If you have just one day to prepare for an Excel-related interview, your goal isn’t to learn everything — it’s to refresh the essentials, cover high-frequency questions, and get hands-on practice so you can answer with confidence.

Here’s a step-by-step crash plan (8–10 hours total):

⏰ Hour 1: Understand the Job Role

  • Check the job description → Which Excel skills do they want? (e.g., data analysis, reporting, dashboards, VBA, Power Query).
  • Identify focus areas → If it says MIS, focus more on reporting formulas. If Data Analyst, focus more on lookup, filters, and pivot tables.
  • Quickly note down:
    • Core functions mentioned
    • Tools (Pivot Table, Power Query, Macros, SQL, etc.)
    • Business context (sales reports, financial data, etc.)

⏰ Hours 2–4: Formula Mastery

Focus on 10–12 key formulas you will almost certainly be tested on:

Formula / FunctionWhy ImportantQuick Example
VLOOKUP / XLOOKUPMerge datasets, fetch related data=XLOOKUP(101, A2:A100, B2:B100, "Not Found")
INDEX + MATCHFlexible lookups=INDEX(Sales, MATCH("Apple", Product, 0))
IF + IFSConditional logic=IF(B2>5000,"High","Low")
SUMIF / SUMIFSConditional totals=SUMIFS(Sales, Region, "East", Product, "Apple")
COUNTIF / COUNTIFSCount with conditions=COUNTIFS(Region,"West", Sales, ">5000")
TEXT functions (LEFT, RIGHT, MID, TRIM, LEN)Clean & extract text=LEFT(A2,5)
FILTERDynamic filtering=FILTER(A2:D100, Region="North")
UNIQUERemove duplicates=UNIQUE(Product)
Date functions (YEAR, MONTH, EOMONTH, TEXT)Date-based analysis=TEXT(A2,"MMM-YYYY")

Action:

  • Open Excel and type small practice datasets (10–15 rows).
  • Try each formula 3–4 times until you can do it without looking up syntax.

⏰ Hours 5–6: Pivot Tables & Data Cleaning

  • Create 2–3 quick Pivot Tables:
    • Sales by Region and Month
    • Top 5 products by revenue
  • Practice:
    • Sorting, filtering
    • Grouping dates
    • Adding calculated fields
  • In Power Query:
    • Remove duplicates
    • Split columns
    • Change data types
    • Merge two tables

⏰ Hours 7–8: Practice Real Problems

  • Download any sample dataset (e.g., sales data, HR data from Kaggle or random CSV).
  • Do these exercises:
    • Find top performer by sales
    • Monthly sales trend
    • Count customers who purchased more than 3 times
    • Merge customer table with orders table
    • Create a simple dashboard (Pivot + Slicer)

⏰ Hour 9: Review Common Interview Questions

Technical Qs:

  1. Difference between VLOOKUP and INDEX+MATCH?
  2. How to remove duplicates without affecting original data?
  3. How do you handle missing data in Excel?
  4. How to extract month name from a date?
  5. What is the difference between Absolute and Relative cell references?

Scenario Qs:

  1. “You have sales data; find the top 3 regions by revenue.”
  2. “Find customers who purchased in Jan but not in Feb.”
  3. “Your report shows wrong totals—how do you troubleshoot?”

⏰ Hour 10: Mock Drill

  • Set a 30-min timer.
  • Ask a friend (or yourself) to give you 5 tasks on a dataset.
  • Solve them without Google — this simulates test conditions.
  • After the drill, check your answers and note mistakes.

💡 Last-Minute Tips for the Interview

  • Think out loud → Even if you don’t know the answer, walk through your approach.
  • Show shortcut keys (Ctrl+T for tables, Alt+N+V for Pivot Tables) — looks impressive.
  • Focus on accuracy first, speed later — wrong answers ruin trust.

Featured products