Re: RE: Seek Data Warehouse Design skill

  • From: Michael Thomas <mhthomas@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 15:50:36 -0700 (PDT)

Hi,

--- solbeach@xxxxxxx wrote:
> I was given a 10 question quiz when interviewing for
> my current position which is Oracle DBA & Unix SA
> combo. I got
> 7 out of 10 correct & was the 1st person to get more
> than
> ONE question correct!
> 
> It seems that many folks attempt puffery when
> seeking 
> employment.
> 
> > 
> > From: ryan.gaffuri@xxxxxxxxxxx
> > Date: 2004/08/18 Wed PM 04:09:58 EDT
> > To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: RE: Seek Data Warehouse Design skill
> > 
> > We had to do 70 phone screens to find 3 quality
> developer/designers here. Most people couldn't even
> know what a deadlock was. People literally got every
> question on the phone screen wrong. 
> > This is in northern virginia. Pretty big
> population base here and alot of people looking for
> work. I believe we used Monster and Dice. 
...

Hiring new people has sometimes been a very
frustrating experience. The way it worked best for me
(I had to hire four new PL/SQL developers last year)
was to create a common list of about 10-15 questions.
Then I compared the replies given by all candidates.
That seemed to work and was fair in my opinion. 

As an interviewer, I don't believe its whether they
got the answer *right* or *wrong* (I don't ask many
easy questions). But, I follow up the questions with
discussions of their related work experience. This
gives me good information of their recent experience.

One example question: 
Do/have you used REF CURSORS in PL/SQL and how?

Based on the answer and the discussion I can discern
if they worked on client based applications or server
based PL/SQL. Some candidates used REF CURSORS for
calling stored procedures from a client only. Others
wrote database backend PL/SQL only, or did not have a
use for REF CURSORS on their previous projects. 

Either case, I usually got a good understanding of the
interviewee's experience.

Another example:
What are some uses of TYPE in PL/SQL?

This is a good one, because there are many different
answers. Yet, normally one would not have all the
possibilities on the tip of the tongue. Interesting
differences among candidates on this question.

HTH 

Regards,

Mike Thomas


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