As an aspiring Management Consultant, do you think I need excel VBA skills? Is it enough to be just proficient in excel but without VBA skills?

This, surprisingly, is a good question. I guess in the strategy and analytical-minded areas it is certainly an advantage, however for the vast majority of this profession (SI, Process Improvement, Body-shopping PMOs) is it pointless.If you harbour ambitions to go into banking thereafter, then certainly a useful tool to have.If you want to stay in the process mapping, PMO body shopping, SI space..don't waste your time.ZB

Not needed for a strategy house.Massively useful skill to have though - so always worth picking up. Worked in a strategy/change function in a bank and was really helpful there!

Oh, ZB! How narrow-minded! How parochial! How engstirnig!VBA skills may be useful for you ever-so-clever strategy/ibanking/PE/VC numerate, double-cuffed shirted types, but without us lot - the mappers, the gap-analysers, the bechmarkers, there would be chaos!Even the smartest of your ilk requires our expertease to ensure the following:inetegrity of your application/code - Change Management/Config Managementprovision of a route to resolve any issues encoutnered - Incident Managementa framework for managing enhancements - Release Managementthe ability to ensure you never touch the sides - Capacity Managementa mechanism to ensure your lattes are hot - Supplier Managementand so on......Deep down, you know this. All the best - and keep mapping.

We used to have a guy with good Excel VBA skills and good Access skills, plus a good, logical mind. Even in a process-improvement team, work always flowed his way when there was a complicated problem to solve or a lot of data to analyse.So it's not a must-have, but it will come in handy and can mark you out in your early years. It will become less important as you move up the ladder.