Module 4 · Career, projects and honesty Lesson 12 of 15
Build the portfolio project: a working reports pack built in Excel and Word
Take one dataset you actually have — attendance, sales, marks, expenses — and build a one-page report in Word fed from a spreadsheet, with the summary paragraphs drafted and then corrected by you. It is the thing you will talk about in the interview, so it has to be small enough to finish in a fortnight and concrete enough to show a person in one minute.
The concept
Take one dataset you actually have — attendance, sales, marks, expenses — and build a one-page report in Word fed from a spreadsheet, with the summary paragraphs drafted and then corrected by you. Finish it before you start the next one. A half-built idea shows nothing; a small finished thing shows that you can finish.
Use the tool as a collaborator, not an author: ask it for a plan, a critique and a checklist, and write the work yourself. In the interview the questions will be about the decisions — why this, why not that — and only the work you did yourself has answers.
Write one paragraph beside the project: what problem it solves, what you used, and what you would do differently next time. That paragraph is the interview.
Worked example
Finished, it is a spreadsheet with clean columns and a report page that regenerates in ten minutes from new numbers.
Your practice task
Break it on purpose: add a blank row and a text year, and see which figures move. Knowing what breaks it is the skill that keeps you employed.
Do this before moving on. Reading a solution teaches the shape of it; typing it teaches you.
Key takeaway
Take one dataset you actually have — attendance, sales, marks, expenses — and build a one-page report in Word fed from a spreadsheet, with the summary paragraphs drafted and then corrected by you.
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Your certificate is ready, and the projects you built are the proof to attach to an application.
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Finish every lesson to unlock the certificate. Each one ends in a practice task — do them and the final project brief writes itself.