PompeyTID (5/8/2013)
If you recruit someone on their aptitude (capacity) to learn, keeness, motivation, who is respectful of others, consciencious, honest, (note NO technical skills), you can then provide the framework in which they can grow and acquire the mere technical skills. Recruiting on a person's core DNA / behavioural traits has consistently proven a successful method. Any immediate high-end technical skills needed are filled short-term via the contractor market.
The problem with this is that there are things you want doing by someone with a long term commitment to the organisation, but that require technical knowledge and know-how that will take too long to acquire without a good solid technical background to start from. This is maybe pretty rare as a requirement for DBAs (it is pretty rare for software developers, why should DBAs be different) but it will happen from time to time. So it isn't always possible to recruit long term employees with NO regard to technical skills. I agree that it usually is, and of course what a recruitment agent or an HR wallah thinks is a technical skill usually is just parrot learning (why oh why do adverts for developers require experience with particular programing languages and tools rather than the ability to pick up trivial things like that quickly and easily and experience of designing things and developing them) so if those are the technical skills you want to leave out of recruitment you are absolutely right, but in that case what does you reference to the short term contractor market mean?
ps the single most important tech skill for a DBA is their ability to ensure the recoverability of an organisation's data
A lot of people think that, but they are wrong. The DBA's function is to ensure that the databases are fit for purpose. If fitness for purpose requires recoverability, then that is part of what has to be ensured - but even then, it may not be the most important part.
Tom