Context

Many analyst and operations roles expect candidates to use tools like Excel and SQL to inspect data, summarize trends, and answer simple business questions. Interviewers often ask this to assess both technical familiarity and how practically you apply these tools.

Core Question

Explain your experience using SQL for data analysis. In your answer, cover:

1. The kinds of analysis tasks SQL is well suited for
2. Common SQL operations you use to explore and summarize data
3. How SQL compares with spreadsheet tools like Excel for day-to-day analysis
4. A simple example of a query you might write to answer a business question

Scope Guidance

The interviewer is not looking for advanced database theory here. A strong answer should show comfort with basic querying, filtering, grouping, and interpreting results, while also demonstrating when you would use SQL versus Excel.