Industry Experience... Required?

  • Adrian - always good to hear from a new voice.

    I'll jump on board with the 'nice to have' group. There's nothing wrong with hoping that a new hire can hit the ground running with minimal mentoring. Of course, I hope the employer is willing to pay for higher levels of experience.

    On the other hand, if an employer is too sticky about this during the interview process, I think it's a red flag. It's often an excuse for poor managers who don't have the foggiest idea of what's going on in their department. They don't want to mentor someone because they don't know how!

    Many of you have seen the 'demotivational poster' series (if not, click on http://www.despair.com). Some of them are very funny. One of my favorites is "Tradition" - it's a picture of the Spanish 'running with the bulls' event with the caption, "Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid." 'Industry experience' may mean someone has been doing it all wrong for a long, long time. In this case poor managers who hide behind the 'only experienced need to reply' banner deserve what they get.

    ___________________________________________________
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  • The problem that is faced in requiring industry experience in both development dba's and non dev is that they often do not ask important questions because they 'understand' the industry. Sometimes it is more important to hire someone who can think, grasp and move quickly. They may not even be a stellar sql gee golly wizbang but because they can think on their feet, adapt and grow quickly you will get much better product from them.

    Industry experience at one company may be completely different than the industry experience at a competitor of that company. It really goes back to the fact that you cannot hire someone based on a multiple choice test or a short interview. You need to hire the person and their abilities not their knowledge. Their abilities to grow and adapt will take them much further than their outdated MCDBA... (oh did they forget to mention it was for SQL 7)

  • One of the toughest things is just trying to get your foot in the door at something like a pharma. You know you can go in, you know you can do a good job, but they won't even look at your resume because you don't have Pfizer on it or something. It makes me wonder how people even get started in those places, as you have to have worked there previously. Real catch 22 situations there.

    Oh, and Adrian, nice morph avatar. Haven't seen morph in so long it's ridiculous.



    Shamless self promotion - read my blog http://sirsql.net

  • Loner (1/2/2009)


    DBA is different from SQL Developer and I think being a developer, industrial experience is very important.

    Completely agreed here. Being in a development role, I have learned equal amounts about the specific area I am working in now as I have learned about SQL Server since I started my new position in July of 2008. The business users talk in their own language and if you don't learn it yourself, you won't be thriving, and certainly won't be able to ask that "right question" that allows whatever you're creating to add value rather than bandaid a problem.

    Thinking of times when I have had to troubleshoot or fix a system that is broken, I have relied on basically no industry knowledge and it's all just tech.

  • The answer really depends on what the expectations are for the role of the DBA are within an organization. If the organization expects a DBA to do design as well as implementation, then industry experience is important. If the organization has Business Analysts that do the client facing work, then the organization wants a DBA that is very good at DBA work, and industry experience is not needed.

    So, if you are in a job search situation that states industry experience required and the job responsibilities do not list any client facing tasks, it is a question that begs asking in the interview.

    Mark

  • I'll have to go with "it depends". If what's being looked for is general SQL knowledge, with a focus on performance tuning, administration, data warehousing, etc., then industry experience isn't particularly important. If it's data architecture, system design, etc., then industry experience can make a critical difference.

    For example, judging how far to normalize contact data is going to depend on how it's going to be used, protected, etc. You can't know that without knowing the industry in general and the specific business as well. In some businesses, it's going to be just fine to have a table of contacts, with phone, address and e-mail in that table, in others, you need to separate all of those, and in still others, you might need to go as far as multiple names for the same contact. Do you need to store age? How about gender? What about if gender changes? Titles (Mr/Ms/Miss/Mrs/Dr/Rev/etc)? What about if titles change? Do you need a full history, or just the current one?

    A database architect who knows these things will do a better job, faster and more efficiently, than one who doesn't. Asking questions about it will only take you as far as you know to ask the right questions and as far as the people answering them understand the purpose of the question.

    If you don't know how far to normalize contact data for an industry, and you ask the experts you are working with, they probably won't know what "normalize" means. So you'll be forced to ask, "do you need to keep a history of a contact's titles?", and they might not know whether that's important or not.

    So, it depends.

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  • "Industry Experience" - Here i'd call industry as IT industry and i'd prefer to have a real-life experience. I might have read entire BOL and other stuff, but chances are i'll fail at the time of real crisis. Experience in dealing with real-life situation is far more important than having gained bookish knowledge and test scenarios where i know exactly which direction i need to go to resolve the issue.



    Pradeep Singh

  • In my experience, "industry experience required" means one of two things in a job posting. Either it's a weed out mechanism because that job already has a candidate destined to fill it, but some silly law or HR policy requires that it be posted -- or -- there are insufficient business analysts (or executives) around who know the business and they need somebody to hold their hands through data modeling exercises and such.

    😉

    Unless you know the business, you probably won't get/don't want the job anyway.

  • I can think of a few occassions where my knowledge of a particular industry has helped me in a different position.

    You can be a good DBA with no industry specific knowledge but to become an excellent employee you have to do your job with empathy for the way in which your industry or company works.

    For example, I could write an application to upload a data file for a travel tour operator, but a good knowledge of the TOPAS file format would give me a good head start and enable me to spot bugs and issues.

    Knowing how address deduplication works would influence my design for a name and address solution.

    I know that downtime in my place of work costs the company £30K per minute. That knowledge affects my decisions as to what maintenance gets done and when.

  • As with everything, it depends.

    I think it's as likely that it's thrown in there to limit the candidates as it is just an addition by HR that isn't really required. My advice, apply anyway if you want the job. It can't hurt, and worst case they turn you down.

    Is it required? I'd say no and Jeff's first comment said it best. Better to have skills as a DBA and learn the business specific stuff for the company.

    However I would add that I think part of being a good DBA, and perhaps developer, is being able to pick up the business stuff quickly. Making an effort to learn industry specific jargon, requirements and solutions.

  • I subscribe to the "data is data" argument. A database developer works closer to the business rules than a DBA, however even with a developer, previous industry experience is not the proper litmus test for hiring qualified candidates. Industry knowledge ultimately needs to reside with Business Analysts, Requirements Managers and Management. My opinion is that if your company's industry knowledge lies within your IT department, you have bigger problems than worrying about hiring candidates with industry experience. Rather than greatly narrowing your choice of qualified candidates by requiring industry experience, employers should focus on the far more important aspects of say, skill set, practical IT experience, motivation, previous references and desirable personality traits.

  • Put me in the data is data, coding is coding group. As has been noted by others, sometimes "Industry Experience" is more of a hindrance than a help.

    When I started in IT I had no IT experience or Pulp and Paper Industry experience, but because I wanted to learn and had co-workers who wanted to mentor I was able to learn both IT and the necessary parts of Pulp and Paper making.

    I've also spent time in the student loan industry with no experience and now in non-profit Missions with no prior experience. And to be honest in my current position the incumbent developers have been more hindrance than help because "we've always done it this way".

  • I think another requirement is that a developer needs to have support time under their belt. Developers that write code and hand it off never get a good feel for how good or bad their choices are.

    I think that the most important interview question\direction is identifying if the person is capable of THOUGHT and has an Inquiring Mind. That will take them far further than experience.

  • bnordberg (1/1/2009)


    I agree it is a nice to have industry experience, but absolutly not necessary.

    Further I think single industry experience is a detrement. For example in healthcare (At least in the federal and state hospitals I work in), we are so far behind other industries, that if your scope is so narrow as to only include healthcare, you are missing out. And people with only healthcare experience tend to put blinders on and not think outside the healthcare box. I believe this is the main reason that MUMPS and Cache are still kicking in the healthcare industry (and retarding our data analysis and research efforts!).

    Now if only I can get the directors to understand this concept - unfortunatly they to have been trapped in 1 industry so they don't see any issues.

    I've worked in several industries and I see the same mistakes made over and over and solutions that could easily be adapted are dismissed as not relevant.

    Expand your horizons, look to other industries for solutions and start thinking outside the box!

    Oh, very well said, indeed. In fact, I have a framed picture of a cat sitting in a litter box just a smiling to beat the band... the caption I had put on it was [font="Arial Black"]"Before you can think outside the box, you must first realize... your in a $#%&! box!!!"[/font]

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Steve Jones - Editor (1/2/2009)


    As with everything, it depends.

    I think it's as likely that it's thrown in there to limit the candidates as it is just an addition by HR that isn't really required. My advice, apply anyway if you want the job. It can't hurt, and worst case they turn you down.

    Is it required? I'd say no and Jeff's first comment said it best. Better to have skills as a DBA and learn the business specific stuff for the company.

    However I would add that I think part of being a good DBA, and perhaps developer, is being able to pick up the business stuff quickly. Making an effort to learn industry specific jargon, requirements and solutions.

    Absoluely spot on! One of my first "developer" jobs was with a "small" nationwide telephone company. I didn't know an NPA from an NXX... but, I did before I walked into the interview, though. 😉 When they looked at my resume and saw no previous experience with telephony, they asked about it. I said "A good developer doesn't need to know about telephony to get the job, but a good one will know shortly after that... I thought I'd get a headstart and study for the interview." Even with no previous experience, I was hired damned near on the spot. The really cool part was, they weren't trying to hire a developer (bit of miscommunication on their part)... they were trying to hire a Director... and I got the job. 😉

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

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