I just read Jason Massie’s new Capt. Varchar(MAX) comic. If you have spent much time interviewing SQL Server candidates I’m sure this will bring back some memories.
I was helping a company phone screens candidates for a Senior DBA position a while back. We went through such a bad string of candidates that the three of us started taking bets. Half way through each phone screen we would vote if we thought the candidate would know what the “DELETE <table>” statement was used for, loser bought the others lunch. The really sad thing was that these were supposed to be senior level candidates.
What’s your best SQL Server interview story?
For those of you interviewing for an IT job. Brent Ozar just posted The Top 10 Questions To Ask When Taking an IT Job.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I asked a supposedly senior DBA what the difference between a clustered index and a non-clustered index was. The answer? "They're the same thing." Doh.
I asked a data warehouse DBA candidate about her experience managing databases, and she said, "The largest database I've managed is 10gb, but it's all the same principles whether it's 10gb or a terabyte." Riiiight.
so I had one kind of get clustered index right. He explained the concept alright and said, the "physical data is sorted in order of the clustered index".. Other answers were not as close so I asked a follow up "so in that case how many clustered indexes can you have on a table?" The answer was "I forget the exact number, but it's high. I've had some tables with a lot of clustered indexes" :-|
I once asked a "Sr DBA" with a supposed 8 yrs experience managing "large" databases, "What is a bookmark lookup, why do they occur?". His response, "I don't use those, its often a bad idea to use hints like that." All I could say was "Thank you for your time."
Worst I've had was a 'senior' DBA with 5 years of experience administrating SQL Server. I asked for two types of backups. I was looking for database and log. I'd have taken differential, file or filegroup though.
He said database backup, then thought for a while. Then said that was the only one he knew about.