Re: RE: Seek Data Warehouse Design skill

From: Michael Thomas <mhthomas_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 15:50:36 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <20040818225036.7548.qmail@web50603.mail.yahoo.com>

Hi,

solbeach_at_cox.net 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_at_comcast.net
> > Date: 2004/08/18 Wed PM 04:09:58 EDT
> > To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> > 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

Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com

To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request_at_freelists.org put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line.

--
Archives are at http://www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/
FAQ is at http://www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Received on Wed Aug 18 2004 - 17:46:17 CDT