My resume said I was fluent in Excel, took me 3 weeks to admit I wasn't

Applied for a data entry gig in Columbus that listed Excel as a requirement. I figured I knew enough, so I put 'fluent' on there. Day two, my boss asked me to build a pivot table and I just stared at the screen for a solid 10 minutes. Finally had to tell him I only knew how to sort and sum, and he laughed so hard he gave me a training link. Took me about 15 hours of YouTube videos before I could actually make one without googling it. Anyone else get in over their head with a skill they claimed on paper?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesse99420d ago

I read something the other day about how most people overestimate their Excel skills by like 40%, so you're definitely not alone there. The pivot table thing is a classic, I know a guy who claimed he could do VLOOKUPs and then asked me what a "table array" meant. Honestly, the fact that your boss laughed and gave you a link instead of firing you is a win. I've seen people get walked out for less, so you lucked out. Still, 15 hours of YouTube is a lot, but at least you can brag about pivot tables now for real.

sam_murphy3919d ago

Not gonna lie, @jesse994 is spot on. I did the same thing at my last job, told my manager I could handle a mail merge and then spent a whole weekend watching tutorials because I had no clue what a data source was. Ended up printing 200 envelopes with the same name on them, which was pretty much the office joke for a month. At least you got a link out of it, I got a sticky note with the word "google" on my monitor.