Re: Designing a DBA interview process to validly measure candidate abilities.
- From: Dba DBA <oracledbaquestions@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: ORACLE-L <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 11:19:57 -0400
Ask a broad range of questions. No one is an expert at everything. Try to
avoid the trap of asking about specific features or things you have done at
your project. I have seen people have an urge to basically show off when
they interview. It isn't really important if the person knows how to do
your solution, it is important if he/she understands it and can help solve
complex issues. People can always pick this up. If they don't do well on a
subject move on to something else. This way you can see what they are good
at.
I also like to look at their resume. If they claim they are good at
something hit them on it.
Don't worry if they can't remember syntax off the top of their heads. It
isn't hard to go look at your RMAN scripts or the web to remember the
syntax.
See if they understand how the DB works. Tom Kyte asks all candidates to
draw a picture of the Oracle DB and its processes. Not a bad questions, but
don't expect people to have this memorized. Its easy to forget stuff. Just
look for general understanding.
If there is a performance problem ask them to talk about their technique. I
like to also throw in that you are dealing with someone who doesn't know
databases well and just wants it to work. So it is hard to get useful
feedback from this person. So its more real life.
Parts of the interview should be tailored to the kind of job you have. If
its 24x7 support where you rotate pagers... (you want to see the expression
on their face when you tell them this), go you get paged at 2 AM on
saturday morning and the page says 'DB down'. This is your first oncall
rotaton. We have mediocre documentation. What do you do to try to figure
out what is going on?
You are talking to a mid-level java developer. He doesn't understand why
his query which runs a loop 500,000,000 times is slow. It was fast when it
looped 3 times in dev. How do you explain this to him without making him
feel stupid.
Most shops use unix. So ask him a few simple unix questions to see if the
person can get around. I might hand him a shell script(simple one) and ask
him to explain it. unix syntax can be goofy so don't worry if the person
doesn't remember all the bits and pieces.
stuff like that. Look for their approach to solve problems. Try to find out
if this is a 'lets solve stuff'' or a sit there and work to you can go 'not
my fault' person. There are a number of government projects where you are
expected to work to not my fault if you do more, you can get fired. So in
the DC area I have to see if the person is totally tied to not my fault or
not.
On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 4:18 AM, <Christopher.Taylor2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I find its easier to get a question posted here and love the breadth of
> knowledge sharing that goes on.
>
> Maybe we should start an "Ask Oracle-L" site? :)
>
> Chris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Michael Dinh
> Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 12:23 AM
> To: fmhabash@xxxxxxxxx
> Cc: oracle-l
> Subject: Re: Designing a DBA interview process to validly measure
> candidate abilities.
>
> I started as Junior DBA and would read asktom daily. It takes motivation,
> drive, thirst to get there. Ask the question.
>
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> //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
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