G'day all,

I would like to offer an observation without claiming it is either good or bad - simply an observation.  The term DBA has came to mean a lot of different things.  As was mentioned above, anyone who touches a database can claim to be a DBA with some level of experience.  What the term "DBA" lacks is a context.

There is a tremendous difference between someone who manages a production environment with a hundred servers, another person who may write and tune SQL procs all day as part of an application or product team, and a third person who operates as an architect primarily modeling at a conceptual and logical level.  However, it is also normal for each of these people to call themselves a "DBA".

I have worked in each of the above positions, and the title always included DBA, perhaps with some sort of modifier (senior, junior, bozo, whatever).  The skills that were freshest in my mind as a production DBA have little or no bearing on my work as a database architect.  A "DBA" supporting product development falls somewhere between these two.

The job description posted for an open position is usually so loosely written that a candidate may not know what the position actually requires.  I have made it a habit that I speak to someone inside a potential client who actually has technical knowledge before I agree to an interview.  Getting past the screeners is often very difficult, as it is a numbers game for them.  The screener plays the odds and figures that if he submits 10 or 100 times the number of required candidates then one of them may actually be a fit.

I implemented a solution at one of my prior employers by compensating the screeners in the HR department based on the ratio of hires to qualified candidates.  The more garbage they sent me, the lower their quarterly bonus.  This eliminated the numbers game completely.  Rightfully so, they required that I write clear job description in order to weed out the "DBA" candidates that would often have been submitted and rejected.

So what is my point?  There is a requirement for everyone in the hiring process to have a focus on the quality of the candidates - not on the quantity of the candidates.  If HR (internal, or the headhunters, or the bodyshops) is not sufficiently trained then we need to set their expectations and get them trained.  Rejecting candidates earlier in the cycle is far more proferable than sittign through the types of intervies described in this series of articles.

Random thoughts from someone who has "been there, done that".

Good day,

Wayne