Excelling At Excel-ing

Back in the day, I was a new hire and had to take a skills test to prove I knew how to use Excel. I’m talking about it with my boss.

Me: “Even though I proved I knew it in my interview?”

Boss: “We’ve been burned too many times by interviewees who outright lied and tried to fake it until they made it. They never made it.”

Fair enough, so I took the test.

The problem was, the test required click-by-click, key-by-key adherence to a recorded script. If the instruction said to save, and the script clicked File, Save, but you typed Ctrl-F, S, or clicked the Save icon, sorry, that’s wrong. If you had to move from C3 to E5 and pushed right right down down, instead of down down right right, sorry, that’s wrong.

This caused me to fail the first time, and I was telling my boss about it.

Me: “Did the person making the test know how to use Excel at all? Did they not think that a scripted guide is a terrible way to test someone’s Excel skills?”

Boss: *Smiling.* “You sure seem to know how to fix it! Congrats, guess what your first assignment is going to be?”

Now I’m not so sure if I failed or passed that test…