Monday, March 17, 2008

DBA Interview Questions

Snappy Interviews: 100 Questions to Ask Oracle DBAs is one of those valuable books that you need to have in your library if you interview Oracle talent or are a technical recruiter.

I am neither right now, but author Christopher Lawson has some great advice for interviewers. There is an art to asking questions and this book is skillfully written to show this art.

Niche questions seeking very arcane knowledge do not test the breath of skills and knowledge of a interviewer. A few questions on minutia are fair game. But you want to quickly access what is in the candidate's skull as relates to the job at hand and not ascertain if they would be a good partner for Trivial Pursuit.

Question the understanding of concepts. The ability to recite rote memorized lists usually fails at three o'clock in the morning. And ask about the entire breadth of the position, just not one small segment.

These have been unstated goals of the MySQL Certification exam questions. We do not ask for a lot of SYNTAX or ask for a series of mouse clicks. The goal is to test how well you know MySQL products.

So if you are interested in this book, use 'snappy oracle' as search words at Amazon or head to www.oraclemagician.com





Every company seems to have 'those' interview questions that is designed to put interviewees in exceedingly nervous mode. 'Can you name the former Presidents of the United States that are not buried in the United States?' Microsoft had a reputation for this type of questions. Sometimes they are funny. Too often they fall into the James T. Kirk/Kobiashi-Maru level of trivia.

Anyone have any of these questions to share?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I notice a good set of advice in the above. Would have been good if there were some interview based questions here. As an add on to this stuff, I was able to get in touch with some good set of DBA questions and the corresponding answers in the below url:-
http://www.kanbal.com/index.php?/Database/dba-interview-questions-set-2.html

I cleared my interview based on these sets. there seem to a around 7 to 8 sents of such questions and answers. Happy learning.