Re: Rant

One thing to keep in mind is that it is easy to get "rattled" during a job interview and have your mind go blank on you. This is especially true with computer technical types who are basically introverts. Some years back when I was a corporate controller I interviewed a young lady for a admin type position. Her interview was a total disaster. She took the typing test and completely messed it up. But there was something about her skills that came through and I hired her. I was never sorry that I did. She could type up complicated tax forms that were always 100% correct. She was a model employee.

Sometimes you have to go by your gut feel. Answers to technical questions are not the complete picture.

My $0.02 worth,

Ken Janusz, CPIM

• Original Message ----- To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com> Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 9:58 AM

> Ok, I need to vent a little.
>
> Last week, I was asked to do some tech interviews over
> the phones for a mid level DBA position. Someone with
> about 2-3 years experience.
>
> I don't consider myself a real smart DBA, nor do I
> think that I ask particularly tough questions. The
> questions that I ask potential candidates are soley
> based on what is on the resume. So I figure if
> someone has, say, hot backups or SQL tuning on their
> resumes, I'd expect them to be able to hold a fairly
> intelligent conversation about these topics. No such
> luck!
>
> What really frustrated me, and what I really want to
> get out of my system, is that nobody that I talked to,
> had a real good concept of hot backups. Forget about
> recovery. I asked each and every candidate who
> claimed to have done hot backups, just give me a high
> level overview of how you do a hot backup. Don't care
> about syntax, just give me the mechanics. The answers
> I got were completely off base, baffling and
> frustrating. Some of these folks claimed to have 5
> years experience!!!
>
> 'Well, we use scripts to do these, so I'm not sure how
> these are done...' (But it says on your resume you've
> done this???)
>
> 'Oh, I take the tablespace offline, and copy the
> datafile to tape...' (Unless I'm mistaken, that's not
> how a hot backup is done, right?)
>
> 'Well, I use the export utility, and as the backup
> starts, it is written to the dump file.' (Huh? What?)
>
> 'During this time, everything is written to the redo
> logs and not to the tablespace...' (You've been
> reading one of those books, haven't you?)
>
> I also asked them how they'd put a tablespace in
> backup mode. Simple enough, right? Not one of them
> got it right. Not even close. Didn't have clue as to
> what I was talking about. Fair enough, you don't
> know. Well how about a simple recovery scenario. I
> asked every candidate how they would do an online
> recover of a datafile while the database was still in
> use. No ideas. Not even close.
>
> I dunno, perhaps I'm spoilt by being a member of this
> list? Perhaps I expect every candidate to be as
> knowledgeable as you guys? Perhaps I'm asking too
> much?
>
> Rant over. Thanks for listening.
>
> mkb
>
>
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-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: KENNETH JANUSZ
  INET: kjanusz_at_att.net

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