Excel modeling skills on resumes

CFA General
#1

Because I lack direct equity analysis experience, my resume looks pretty weak.

Would putting down Advanced Excel Modeling improve my resume?

I am planning to study excel, from the basics up to being able to do some simple financial modelings and forecasting.

How long do you think it would take me master the core of it?

I really want to know if this idea would help me or not…Thanks

#2

It can’t hurt to pump up your excel skills.

I always wonder what “Advanced Excel Skills” actually means. As much when it’s in a job description as when it is on a resume.

#3

I would be highly skeptical to see “adv. excel modeling”

#4

I think it’s great to try to master Excel, but you should learn it in the context of solving specific problems. I’ve been using Excel pretty much since it came out so I can point you to some resources.

To be an effective user of Excel in finance, at a minimum you need to know the basics of Excel including pivot tables; the built in functions such as offset, vlookup, match, index, string manipulation functions such as left, mid etc; decision making functions such as IF, countif and so on. And you should be able to write in VBA so you can create your own functions, not just recording macros but writing from scratch. Also charting, sorting, and Excel’s functions including statistics and finance, where you can go wrong using NPV; Excel’s Solver, matrix functions, data tables, filters, formula auditing and so on… I could go on and on but this should be good for a start.

I don’t know what area you are interested in, but if you want to build financial models, you should also include scenario and sensitivity analyses. I never took the courses from Wall Street Prep so can’t give an opinion on them - but many people do and like them. Here’s a link to their free Excel resources. http://www.wallstreetprep.com/blog/excel_resources.php

Maybe try this first: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~balik/AFS06Balik.pdf it has some good basics.

For general knowledge, there’s the Excel guru “Mr Excel” whohas some really good books. http://www.mrexcel.com/

Then there’s the books on financial modeling using Excel from Wiley, such as this one “Structured FInance Modeling with Object Oriented VBA” , http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470098597.html

there’s a whole series of these books including the well known book by Mary Jackson on financial modeling using VBA and Excel.

Also this chandoo site has useful information

http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/07/21/financial-modeling-introduction/

There’s also a professor who wrote a book on financial modeling using Excel, Simon Benniga, “Principles of Finance with Excel”, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006. Again I never used this, didn’t need to but others recommend it highly.

I also found this site which looks pretty decent. http://www.financialmodelingguide.com/financial-modeling-tips/tricks/microsoft-excel-finance/

Then you can move on to learning to import live financial data into your spreadsheets (including Bloomberg API) and so on.

good luck!

#5

Companies that highly value excel and demand advanced skills will test you during the interview process.

#6

Thank you so much. This is exactly what I am looking for to get started.

#7

Ok, I wont mention advanced then…

#8

Well I pretty much learned most of the basic that DoubleDip talked about other than matrix and auditing through my university’s modeling class. Really I think the best way to learn is tohave some data (wharton database [not from wharton, but school pays for it], capital iq, bloomberg excel output) and try to munipulate the data so that u can have a full balance sheet/income statement/FCFF statement (use the vlook, match, index, etc…). That was pretty much the only thing we did in that class. Grab data, make it usable and then model it using solver and the stats funcitons.

I really think they need to teach more of these stuff in the undergrad setting. Like for my university only the best students (3.66 GPA) were able to get into that class. I was talking to my prof and he said now they’re actually incorporating the excel modelling class to the lower grads. Way too many undergrads go into internship or jobs without knowing how to use excel at a servicable level.

#9

and don’t forget the courses at ocw.mit.edu, of which many involve excel. You could actually choose a course such as this one http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-535-business-analysis-using-financial-statements-spring-2003/ and go through the lectures and assignments. i checked this one and it uses excel.

“The purpose of this class is to advance your understanding of how to use financial information to value and analyze firms. We will apply your economics/accounting/finance skills to problems from today’s business news to help us understand what is contained in financial reports, why firms report certain information, and how to be a sophisticated user of this information.”

you can go nuts with all these courses, all for free.

And if you have not yet seen Prof Damodaron’s course page (NYU prof) please take a look, he has lots of spreadsheets for financial valuation and may have some instruction as well. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ For example you can start with his Valuation class, see what he is trying to do and look at his spreadsheets to see how he did it, then work to build up your own library. You will learn much more by actually creating the spreadsheets as you learn and then you can have something to talk about on interviews, that you built models to value company xxx etc.

#10

DoubleDip, Thank you so much for your inputs as well. I will go through the MIT course after I gain enough basic understanding of excel.

This helps a lot!

#11

I found www.ozgrid.com to be quite helpful. The site covers a lot of Excel basics and even some Excel VBA programming.

#12

agree with ozgrid. a few more links i usually send to people trying to learn: Duke University Fuqua School of Business has a huge page of all things Excel http://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/~pecklund/ExcelReview/ExcelReview.htm

when you are ready for matrices, who better to learn them from than William Sharpe http://www.eas.uccs.edu/tlilly/SPCE_5065_12Su/Excel%20-%20Sharpe.pdf he used to have a large website with lots of excel stuff but i can’t find it.

#13

I just go with “Proficient in Excel”

#14

Thanks again man.

Have to say that the amount of material is overwhelming at this point. I am already started on the basics.

#15

best of luck to you!

#16

Thanks

#17

Say what you want as long as you can back it up.

#18

I haven’t seen anyone using solver or a pivot table in years. I’d be more concerned about being able to build a decent DCF or LBO model with proper output (e.g. sensitivity tables and capital structure toggles).

But then again, maybe it’s just my narrow scope of work experience.