BWFC (5/12/2014)
Jeff Moden (5/12/2014)
I've started a real pushback on all of this. It's amazing how many of the candidates (something like 22 out of 24) can't answer the first question, which is "using T-SQL, how do you select the current date and time"? If they can't answer that, the interview is over. It's a total waste of time if they can't get beyond that.I've only been using T-SQL for just over twelve months and I'm largely self-taught as are the other members of the team. A question like 'how do you select the current date and time?' would actually make me a little nervous. I know how I'd do it:
Select GETDATE()
And the interview would continue. Obviously using T-SQL for 12 months (depending on whether it was your only task or not), one might not expect you to know everything (like GETUTCDATE(), SYSDATETIME(), CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, and SYSDATETIMEOFFSET() (I looked up the last two because they weren't in active RAM either), but I can't imagine anyone not fetching the current point in time from SQL Server.
If you gave me a wrong answer, I would at least ask you how you could have ever gotten by not getting the current time, partly for my amusement, but also because that is a very common operation and if you actually have a good reason why you hadn't, I might try a few other areas. Of course, that would have to be only for a very junior position 🙂