The Indeed Excel assessment, and how to be ready for it

What the assessment actually is

• It is attached to a job application. Employers choose which assessments to add, so two applications for similar roles can ask for different ones.
• Indeed runs several Excel-related tests of differing depth, from basic spreadsheet handling up to more advanced formula work. The one you are sent depends on the employer, not on you.
• The questions are mostly multiple choice and short scenarios rather than tasks inside a working copy of Excel, so part of what is being measured is whether you can read a formula and predict what it returns.
• Results are reported as a proficiency band rather than a mark out of a hundred, and the band is visible to employers you apply to.
• There is a time limit, and it is short. Most people who run out of time do so on the questions that require reading a nested formula carefully.

The Excel it is built out of

Strip the format away and what is left is a short list of skills that turns up in every spreadsheet test ever set, because it is the list that turns up in every spreadsheet job.

• Totals and averages over a range, and knowing that AVERAGE skips a blank cell but counts a zero.
• References that survive being copied. A shared rate locked with dollar signs is the single most tested idea in the whole category.
• IF, including where the boundary sits. A question that hinges on > against >= is a favourite, because it separates people who read the requirement from people who recognised the function.
• COUNTIF and SUMIF, and the fact that a comparison criterion is written as text with the operator inside the quotes.
• VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP, and why a lookup returns #N/A when the value is plainly in the table.
• Reading an error value. #REF!, #VALUE! and #N/A each mean something specific, and being able to say which is a question in its own right.
• Cleaning imported text with TRIM, which is the other half of the lookup question.

How to prepare in an evening

Reading a list of functions produces recognition, and these tests measure recall. The difference shows up under a timer. The useful preparation is to write the formulas, wrongly at first, and find out what each mistake looks like.

1. 1Work through the ten-question practice test on this site, in a real grid, without looking anything up. Note which ones you had to think about rather than which ones you got wrong.
2. 2Go back to each of those and do the underlying exercise properly, so the method is the thing you remember rather than the answer.
3. 3Deliberately cause the three errors. Break a VLOOKUP into #N/A, point one past the edge of its table for #REF!, and add text to a number for #VALUE!. Recognising an error on sight is worth a question on its own.
4. 4Test the boundaries. Write an IF with > and then with >=, on a row that sits exactly on the threshold, and watch the answer change.
5. 5Last, run the practice test again under a timer you set yourself. Forty-five minutes for the ten is generous; the point is to get used to deciding quickly.

What practising here will not cover

The grid on this site is a formula engine, not a copy of Excel. It is worth being plain about the gap rather than letting you find it during a test.

• No ribbon, no menus and no dialog boxes, so a question about where a command lives is not something you can rehearse here.
• No multiple worksheets, so cross-sheet references are not covered.
• No macros, no Power Query and no conditional formatting rules engine.
• Charts are built from a small panel rather than Excel's chart tools, so the ideas transfer and the clicks do not.

What goes wrong

These are the four mistakes that come up again and again. Each one is reasonable. That is why people make it.

Common questions