September 9, 2009 at 5:22 am
Michael Valentine Jones (9/8/2009)
How would I do with these answers?What would you describe as your strengths?
I can answer really stupid questions without letting my contempt for the person asking the question show.
How do you normally deal with third parties?
I tell them to get their pathetic products working if they expect to ever see another support dollar.
believe me I was so tempted...
I though it was such a generalised question, i struggled to figure out what she wanted to hear. Apparently other candidates waffled about their real life experiences. I have a few, but 9 minutes is not a lot of time and she didnt really come across as wanting to be on the phone long,. to be honest after speaking to 6-7 people already and asking these questions, i wouldnt want to be on the phone that long either.
If she can dismiss me based purely on a non-technical interview of 9 minutes. then it isnt an organisation that is top of my list to work for.
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September 9, 2009 at 5:58 am
I think in all the years I have only been impressed by one companys interview technique.
They start with a simple SQL select statement and get you to spot the missing part (something like the from line is missing). Thats just to settle you in. Then they run through a passenger flight scenario where they ask you to describe how you wopuld get certain data. Again starts with a select, the next may check if you can compare characters, then use distinct, then so on ending up with complex joins. All just to push you till they know your limit.
Then they get you to describe one of your projects and they start with easy questions and again keep going.
This is very time consuming but gives a really good indicator of just what the candidate can \ cant do.
Ells.
😎
September 9, 2009 at 6:34 am
what do you guys think of a 20 minute rapid fire round of questions which are based on exact details .... for eg.
Q: where do you set the permissions for a SQL Login (read/write rights) to have visibility of code inside a proc ?
A: Its ahh .... somewhere in View State /View Schema at database level.
NAHHHHHH ... wrong answer ... Its View Definition .....NEXT
Can such an interview find you the best DBA around ?
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-Amit
Give a man a fish and he'll ask for a lemon. Teach a man to fish and he wont get paged on weekends !! :w00t: - desparately trying to fish [/size]
September 9, 2009 at 6:49 am
if you ask two questions then you will hire someone who can answer two questions. If you ask ten questions then you will hire someone who can answer ten questions.
If people want to hire the right person then they must invest in time.
To answer the last post I worked with someone who probably knew all the answers to the interview questions but was probably the worst employee they ever had. Very clever but he never ever did any work!
Ells.
😎
October 28, 2009 at 10:56 am
Well funnily enough I had a pre-screening telephone call today, pretty much a first for me. twenty questions and the answer was true or false for each question. apart from one which asked me to describe ACID (and I know this question was not a true/false answer). the rest were questions that I had never ever been asked. Needless to say, I felt like a complete wombat after the call finished. god knows how many I got right.
For a production DBA Role including VLDB for an e-commerce company, there was no questions about profiler, or perfmon, monitoring, T-SQL. the questions mainly focused on index's, couple on replication, XSD, one on SSIS and one on SSRS. oh and 1 about deadlocks
And I honestly thought at least one question might be about VLDB lol.
Needless to say, it was a learning curve and doubly made me very aware there is no point in trying to prep for an interview as the questions had no relation to the job spec.
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October 28, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Silverfox (10/28/2009)
Needless to say, it was a learning curve and doubly made me very aware there is no point in trying to prep for an interview as the questions had no relation to the job spec.
Maybe that was the point .... if I could ask someone 20 random questions from all areas of SQL and they could get the majority correct, I'd definitely consider them for an in-person interview. Chances are that they are spending their own time accumulating that knowledge, which always bodes well.
October 29, 2009 at 7:24 am
If I recall I totally choked my last phone interview. Of course it was for a Software Developer position not a DBA position, so when they got into all the deep software development, OO questions I was lost. I had submitted a resume for a DBA job, but because I mentioned .NET in my resume they decided to call me about a Software Dev job.
My last in-person interview went great. I was offered the job.
My answer to the 2 questions:
Strengths - troubleshooting problems and writing performant SQL Code.
Dealing with Third-Parties - It depends, are they willing to work with me? If yes, I love it and will help them make their product better. If no, I'll be looking for a replacement.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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January 18, 2010 at 10:25 am
ROFLMAO, have to be very careful here, in case Gail gives me a slap. The woman that I spoke to is the Database Administrator Manager and she was the 1st dba in the company, they also employ other women dba's . 'feel my feet sinking, like quicksand' must remember to walk softly in my next paragraph.
Maybe my feminine side was slightly lacking and I didnt establish a close enough rapport
As a female dba/developer I feel compelled to add my perspective. Hopefully this is not too un-PC.
I've worked in all female and all male (except 1) groups as much as possible. I avoid both situations which is not easy in this field. I do not find either sex to be terribly prejudice but I do think there are a minority that are not aware that their actions can be biased. A male coworker suprised me recently but calling a dba who failed his deploy the b-word. Was she doing what she has been asked to do? Yes. Would anyone else have anyone else have failed a deploy? Absolutely. Was she unprofessional? No.
My biggest problem with this sort of thing is that I feel the need to hold back my perceptions in order to keep the team successful. How would I even point this out without completely alienating him? (So here I am 😉 )
That said, the most successful and productive partnerships have been with less-feminine guys. There is no reason to act anyway other than yourself.
I think nobody would argue this field requires a diverse set of skills so why not make use of the differences?
My vent.
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