There are five main "Red Flag" questions I ask an interviewer when I am interviewing:

1. Do you give developers here sysadmin access to your production environments? If they answer Yes to this question I terminate the interview right there. This is a disaster waiting to happen on so many levels.

2. Do you have a Change/Access Control process in place for moving code from Dev to QA to production? If so, is it enforced by managment? If they answer No to these questions I terminate the interview. Code movement must be coordinated, priortized and organized. Otherwise, you are probably walking into a disorganized "fire storm" where everything is an emergency.

3. Are all of your DBA's onsite? A remote DBA or remote consultant is a big red flag IMHO for many reasons..

4. Who does this DBA position report to directly? If they say several people I terminate the interview right there. Taking orders from 4 or 5 different people is not only dangerous to your databases, it can get you in trouble real quick with getting conflicting marching orders from different people.

5. How much of this job is running and fixing daily/weekly/monthly reports? If it is more that 25% then I will usually pass on the job. The problem with reports is you are never done with fixing them and usually no one else in the company wants to mess with them either. So, if you get stuck doing this right off you will most probably be doing it full time. Don't let other people "pigeonhole" your career. Ultimately, YOU are responsible for keeping it on track.

As I have said to frustrated recruiters many times in the past who are just primarily concerned with placing you somewhere and making their commissions. "This isn't just about me fitting in there. This is also about whether they fit me and my career goals as well. Interviews are a two-way street." 😀