What 'Power BI' means in a job description: 8 things they test (free PDF)

Most freshers think Power BI means making charts. The interview checks what happens before and after the chart.

Clean data, a proper model, measures that react to slicers, security, and publishing.

Prepare all eight.

1-4: before the first chart, dates and measures

01
Power Query cleaning
Fix data types, remove blank rows, merge and append queries before loading.
02
A star schema model
One fact table, separate dimension tables, one-to-many relationships.
03
A proper Date table
Mark it as a date table. Time intelligence needs it.
```
Date =
CALENDAR(DATE(2024, 1, 1), DATE(2026, 12, 31))
```
04
Measures, not calculated columns
Measures react to slicers. Columns are stored per row.
```
Total Sales = SUM(Sales[Amount])
```

Last year, YTD, month-on-month.

Sales LY =
CALCULATE([Total Sales],
    SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR('Date'[Date]))

06
Row-level security
Each manager sees only their rows. Add this as the role's table filter.
```
[Email] = USERPRINCIPALNAME()
```
07
Visuals that answer one question
Line for trend, bar for comparison, cards for KPIs, slicers and drill-through.
08
Power BI Service
Publish to a workspace, set scheduled refresh, use a gateway for on-premise data, share as an app.

JD says	They test
Data modeling	Star schema, relationships
DAX	CALCULATE, time intelligence
Power Query	Clean and merge before load
Dashboard design	Right visual per question
Security	RLS roles
Deployment	Publish, refresh, gateway

Free PDF

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