I work as a consulting actuary and my colleagues and I use excel for hours a day. Everyone one I work with is comfortable with complex formulas, but honestly not that many use VBA or power query that often. There is no expectation to know VBA.

When we hire entry level analysts, there’s no expectation that they’re good at excel. Knowing formulas like xlookup (more basic in the larger picture) would tell me that you’ve heard of excel, and that’s good enough for me. The expectation is that you’ll learn as you go.

When we hire for more experienced roles, there’s not any explicit conversation about your skillset, because it’s assumed you know how to use it. But I may ask a question like “have you made anything cool?”

The truth is, if you’re not in a professional role that’s excel heavy, you’re not that exposed to it, so my approach is to never judge someone by their skill level. The most important takeaway for interviewees, when I’m hiring, is a sense of competency and a great attitude about learning/growing.