Comments on: What I Want Versus What I Can Afford

By: Hogan

Hogan — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 05:52:28 +0000

Interesting, I applied for a job in late 2001 and put down (correctly) that I had 1 year experience with .net I didn’t get the job and had the recruiter ask why (the interview had gone well). I was told they hired someone else because they had more .net experience than I did. Of course, .net had not existed long enough for that to be possible.

By: Jerome Pineau

Jerome Pineau — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:10:30 +0000

@Tom – Right, so (b) is a trick question because the inevitable answer is “NO”

By: Tom Roush

Tom Roush — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:29:20 +0000

Two stories about interviews:

1. The first DBA position I interviewed for had a total of two questions:
a) “Do you know your stuff, or can you learn it?”
b) “Can you do it without p*ssing people off?”

I loved that – because it simply cut to the chase, no bs.

2. Another interview:
I’d googled ‘sql dba interview questions’ and just made sure that there were no surprises. We all have
our areas of expertise, and some of the questions I’d gotten were out of mine, so I did some research and
made sure I could answer and understand all those questions.
I got to the interview, we did small talk, then the interviewer rather sheepishly pulled out a list of
questions he felt compelled to ask. It was the very same list I’d been working from. It made the rest
of the interview go much easier. (it’s also where I got hired, and just the other day, around my 2 year
anniversary, I told him – and we both got a good chuckle out of it.

By: Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:19:25 +0000

Yeah, sadly, I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve just stopped taking anything from certain headhunters because I know they just promote garbage resumes.