By Hiran de Silva
You walked into the interview confident.
You had the certificates, the LinkedIn endorsements, the hours clocked on YouTube, the badges from modern Excel courses. You’d solved DAX puzzles. You’d reshaped tables with Power Query. You knew the “latest features,” and your toolkit was sharp.
They told you the company prided itself on cutting-edge Excel. Perfect, you thought. That’s me.
Then came the first video. A short thought experiment. Straightforward enough. You smiled. You had this nailed. You couldn’t wait to show them your approach.
But then… the second video.
A one-minute clip. Quiet. Unassuming. But within that minute, everything you knew about Excel was shattered.
No flashy animations. No formulas. No Power Query steps. Just something smooth. Elegant. Surgical. It did in seconds what your “cutting-edge” toolkit wasn’t even designed to do.
You didn’t see a spreadsheet.
You saw a system.
And in that moment, the ground shifted. You realized this wasn’t the Excel you knew. It wasn’t the Excel you’d seen a thousand times on social media. It was something deeper. More powerful. Invisible to the algorithm-chasing world you’d been trained by.
You looked up, and the interviewer wasn’t smirking. He wasn’t judging.
He was waiting.
And instead of bluffing, you did something rare.
You said:
“My answer doesn’t come close to that. But I need to understand what I just saw.”
That right there — that curiosity — became your superpower.
You see, what employers truly value can’t be found on the social media feed that’s built to keep beginners entertained. The enterprise world doesn’t reward your ability to follow tutorials. It rewards your ability to solve business problems — reliably, elegantly, and at scale.
The interviewer told you something profound:
“You couldn’t possibly have known what you saw in that second video. Not your fault. It’s not online.
But the moment you saw it — you recognised it.
You knew it was better.
You were hungry to understand it.
That’s why we’re shortlisting you.
Not for what you knew when you walked in — but for how you responded when your whole map of Excel was torn up before your eyes.”
That’s the kind of person who thrives here. That’s the kind of person who thrives anywhere.
💡 Here’s What You Take Away
- If your learning is driven by what’s trending, you’ll never reach what’s transformative.
- If your growth is shaped by algorithms, it will be capped by the algorithm’s incentives.
- If your ambition is to create real business value, then go beyond what’s popular.
There is a whole world of Excel that isn’t on social media.
Not because it’s too complex — but because it doesn’t engage.
It doesn’t trend.
It doesn’t sell subscriptions or generate ad revenue.
But it does generate enterprise value.
It does solve million-dollar problems.
It does triple your pay — if you’re ready to see it.
🧠 The Question Now Is…
What kind of learner are you?
- One who only learns what’s visible?
- Or one who keeps digging until they discover what’s valuable?
This isn’t about tools. This is about thinking.
And the best thing? Once you’ve seen it — really seen it — you’ll never unsee it.
Now go out there.
You’ve just glimpsed a hidden world.
One that doesn’t flatter, doesn’t trend — but delivers.
You know it’s real. You know it’s powerful.
And now… you know it’s possible.
Welcome to the next level.
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