If you're facing an upcoming SQL Server DBA job interview, or if you're a manager who has to interview DBAs, I want to help. This weekend, I'm giving away my DBA Job Interview Questions & Answers course absolutely free!
Just hit up my training product page, find the DBA Job Interview course, add it to your cart, and check out with coupon code TikTok.
"Out of the stuff on your resume, what are you the proudest of, the most excited about?
When I'm interviewing a candidate for one of my clients, I'll usually start with this question to help understand the resume. See, recruiters seem to actively encourage folks to keyword stuff their resume: to dump in everything and the kitchen sink, every task they've ever performed. Recruiters see the resume as a place to play Keyword Bingo.
When you're hiring a Junior DBA, ask yourself a few questions:
"What job did they have before this?"
Someone who's currently employed as a Junior DBA isn't looking for another Junior DBA job: they're looking for a Senior DBA job. Because of that, you have to rethink how you write the job description and minimum required qualifications.
Whether you're applying for a DBA job or getting ready to hire a DBA, you probably don't know what questions to ask to tell if somebody really knows what they're doing or not - or what answers to look for.
There's the classic tired question, "Tell me the difference between a clustered and nonclustered index," but after that, what?
In this week's episode of our screenshot interview series, you're applying for a database professional position who will be on call. You're not necessarily the DBA, but you're a member of the team on rotation. While you're on call, you get an email from the help desk asking if there's a problem on the production data warehouse server, and they attach this screenshot:
You're a data professional working with (or at least applying to work with) a company using the StackOverflow database (I'm using the March 2016 version today). Your users are complaining that this stored procedure is slow:
They didn't give you parameter 26837 - I'm just giving you that so you can see an execution plan.
After writing about "For Technical Interviews, Don't Ask Questions, Show Screenshots", lots of folks asked what kinds of screenshots I'd show. Here's this week's example.
I show each screenshot on a projector (or shared desktop) to the candidate and say:
On today's episode of the SQL Server Radio podcast, I talk with Guy Glantser and Matan Yungman about what we look for when we're hiring.
In the broadest sense, don't think junior or senior:
Last month's post "For Technical Interviews, Don't Ask Questions, Show Screenshots" was a surprise hit, and lots of folks asked for more details about the types of screenshots I'd show. Over the next few weeks, I'll share a few more. Normally I'd show this query as a screenshot, but for easier copy/pasting into comments, I'm…
When you're hiring a DBA, sysadmin, or developer, you're not paying them to answer Trivial Pursuit questions all day long.
You're hiring them to look at a screen, connect a few dots, and interpret what's happening.
When it comes to hiring a SQL Server developer, we can pepper candidates with HR-type questions ("Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker and how you resolved it.") but that doesn't give us a good sense of a developer's T-SQL skill level. Here are five questions that will give you a good idea how experienced and skilled a developer is.
Hey SQL Server DBAs -- we're hiring!
Here's a quick five question quiz. Give yourself one point for every 'yes':
Hiring a DBA? Need to get a job description for the human resources folks? Here's how to get started.
First, decide whether it's a production or development DBA. Think of the database in terms of a fridge. When you run a restaurant, you need at least one (and probably several) refrigerators to keep your raw ingredients and your prepared dishes cold.
Ever dreaded writing a resume so much that you put it off until the last minute? When you finally wrote it in desperation, were you happy with it? Are you kind of afraid to look at it now?I know what that's like, because I've been there. But I've written two resumes in the last week…
Looking back over all my years of interviewing and being interviewed, I realize that there are simple secrets to getting a great job offer.The big secret is just this: ask great questions.Interviewing Goes Both WaysAsking thoughtful questions in your interview process, from screening to salary negotiations, makes you more powerful. It shows you're engaged, informed,…
Looking for someone with more than a couple years of experience? Here's how to find out if they're bluffing. Includes questions like, "I'm a developer - explain why I need a unique key on my table." Of course, I don't include the answers - that would make it too easy for people to read this blog and fake it!
