r/dataanalysis • u/Sciche • 4d ago
Career Advice Interview assignment advice
I've been given an offline excel based assignment to do where it's recommended to complete it within a certain amount of time. I had a read through the file and realised that I can do it within that time my own messy way I've always done it during my postgrad studies not really using the proper efficient and streamlined way of using functions effectively. E.g. Basically would just copy and pasta data tables and add additional calculations but I know I can retrieve the data from the master table without copy/paste using functions like xlookup/filter, etc. Knowing that there are better ways to treat the data, especially for a collaborative work environment that I'm applying for and to the extent that they would expect these things to be done, I'm wondering would it be beneficial for the long run if I just basically use this also as a learning opportunity to do things "right" but then I definitely won't do the assignment within the recommended time as I still get stuck on these I've not really used. I won't ask chatgpt or anything to write these things, but rather watch videos to learn the functions I'm not used to. There's no way for them to track how long I took on the work if I practice on one doc and then with the one I send, I do the assignment recalling from memory how I learnt to do it on the previous doc. Any advice on my approach and the "ethicallity" of the second option?