May 5, 2014 at 7:02 pm
What type of SQL Database questions would you ask of a prospective junior PHP web developer. We know he is fairly new at it, so no tricky "gotcha" questions. More along the lines of basic understanding of concepts.
May 6, 2014 at 12:02 am
The basics I guess. Writing CRUD statements, how do PK and FK work, maybe a bit about normalization.
Maybe more important to check out if he can find solutions on his own and is willing to learn.
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May 6, 2014 at 7:19 am
Then, basic understanding of concepts. JOINs, WHERE criteria, fundamentals on relational storage. Nothing hard really. Primarily, I'd explore his knowledge set, not actually test it. He's not in a position that I'd be concerned with real skill, but an understanding of how much I'd have to teach him would be useful.
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May 6, 2014 at 7:54 am
homebrew01 (5/5/2014)
What type of SQL Database questions would you ask of a prospective junior PHP web developer. We know he is fairly new at it, so no tricky "gotcha" questions. More along the lines of basic understanding of concepts.
For a "prospective junior PHP web developer", I'd expect most of his development time would be spent writing PHP code and doing other front end design work. All he would (should) be using the database for is selecting from tables or making stored procedure calls. Someone else should be designing the database and playing the admin role. So it seems to me the questions for this guy should center around the SQL SELECT statement, PHP connection and query execution objects, working with resultsets, error handling, etc.
Accessing SQL Server Databases with PHP
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/cc793139(v=SQL.90).aspx
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
May 6, 2014 at 8:03 am
What blogs, forums, dev websites do you follow
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May 6, 2014 at 8:16 am
Usually when we interview candidates, the recruiter has already required them to complete a standard technical assessment exam and HR has qualified them based on their education and visa status. At this point a small number of candidates have been selected.
So for the face to face interview, I don't rely on a list of predefined and questions and answers. Rather, I'll ask open ended questions like:
"Tell me about your current position?"
(followed by a half-dozen "Explain in more detail how..." type questions)
"So if you had an opportunity to design that application from start, what would you do different?"
Of course you as the interviewer have to know what you want and what you're talking about for this to work.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
May 6, 2014 at 10:36 am
I'd ask:
If you have orders and order items and the purchase price is stored only on the order item how would you generate a Total Order Amount?
I'd be looking for a JOIN and the SUM function. I'm dealing with an application now that is looping within the application to generate a sum, so I find it important for developers to know about using aggregate functions in SQL.
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May 6, 2014 at 2:46 pm
I'm not quite sure whether this is a cunning plan or just a bit arsey for a newbie. Push to get them a Pluralsight account on the company, put that in the bumph alongside the other training and mentoring you are offering.
If it boils down to two, and you ask "Which of their courses do you think would benefit you most?". The one who has done their homework and has an idea, big plus. "No idea, didn't look" that'd be a no for me. If you get "I've got the free introduction and ... " Hell Yeah.
"I don't need that ... " call security at that point.
I'm a DBA.
I'm not paid to solve problems. I'm paid to prevent them.
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