Knowing Excel functions alone may not be enough in AI world

I was working with someone who was trying to find a position in the fraud/money laundering detection industry. I gathered she kept encountering Excel requirements for her job, so she asked me for some help in learning Excel, specifically Excel functions and other tools.

But isn’t there software that does the detection for the banks? Why would she be using Excel since the data stream would be huge?

It turns out that for startups and small businesses, they are requirement “everything”, so quite a bit of Excel knowledge.

I started to think about what type of things she would need to know and I realized that for her, just knowing the Excel functions will not be enough. She was going to have to bring something else to the table: maybe creativity and problem solving capabilities.

For me, I actually don’t know that many Excel functions or capabilities, largely because I haven’t had the need for them, so I don’t regard myself as an Excel expert. I regard myself as one who dreams up ideas or approaches to problem, knows how to Google, and stretch beyond the simple solutions.

I figured she was going to have to develop similar skills or something different than learning just Excel features.

And in the world of AI, this capability will become even more important because AI will take over the simple stuff.

Example of going beyond simple Excel functions

Here’s an example of a situation where a simple SEARCH or RIGHT or LEFT simply won’t do. The formulas get complicated to pull out certain information, in this case, a LinkedIn URL.

Here’s the sample text with a LinkedIn URL embedded in the text:

“Hi all from NYC – I am Joey Juicy, looking to pursue my career in banking, finance, and capital markets. Background in derivatives trading, portfolio management, treasury and funding. Find me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeyjuicy/ Also open to correlated roles such as financial advisor and/or wealth management advisor. Love to connect and network.”

That text is found in cell C44 in the image below, but the full text extends beyond the screen.

Cell E47 has a rather long formula. That formula is shown in cell C50. There’s RIGHT, LEFT, SEARCH, LEN and IFERROR. Not a simple formula.

Thought process to build Excel formula with multiple functions

I’m not going to go through the thought process in developing the solution because that is not the purpose of this post, but I did want to show that it was a series of steps to develop the solution.

In the image below (Image 2), I’m referencing C44 that contains the text with possible LinkedIn URL embedded.

Continuing on…

So, you see, it is not a simple write down a formula from top of head; you may have to do iterations to arrive at a solution that works.

You could use TEXTBEFORE and TEXTAFTER to pull out the LinkedIn URL. And there may be other ways. One option might be Power Query (I don’t know; I would have to play around and see if I could do it). You might also want to consider asking AI to help you in the development of the formula or approach.

Conclusion about learning Excel

Simply learning Excel may not be enough. You might have to bring ingenuity and problem-solving skills to the fore. When you include designing solutions for other people, it becomes even more complicated because well, people are complicated. They give you surprises.

There are a gazillion articles on what skills you will need to develop in order to survive and thrive in this new AI world. Here’s a link to one of them.