August 14, 2012 at 8:41 am
Adi Cohn-120898 (8/14/2012)
Few years ago I've had very strange interview. I was asked all kind of strange questions that had nothing to do with my ability to work as a DBA. At first they asked me if I can show them my high school grades. I told them that I have no idea where to find my high schools grade. They asked me few times how come I'm not able to find my high school grades with me (at that time I was already over 30 year old, and high school was a very remote memory). I told them that I'll might be able to find my grades from college, but I don't think that I'll be able to find a report card with my high school grades. After that I was asked about my typing ability - How fast do I type? do I have mistakes and typos? etc. At this point I started thinking that I got to the wrong interview and asked them if this is the interview for the DBA position. The answer was yes. After few more questions that had nothing to do with databases and programming, I told them "thank you, no thank you".At another interview that was very strange I was asked many technical questions but none of them was about SQL Server. At first I was asked about UNIX. They asked me about 10 questions about UNIX and for each one of them I replied that I don't know UNIX at all. After that they started asking me questions about DB2. Again I replied that I never worked with it, and don't know the answers. They just kept asking more questions about DB2. When they realized that I told them the true and I don't know how to work with DB2, they asked me questions about few other technologies. The only thing that I was not asked about was SQL Server. Of course I didn't get that job.
Adi
Were either or both of these set up by a recruiter? First sounds like confusing data entry with DBA. Second sounds like generic DBA position but they forgot to mention what they wanted specifically. I.e. someone with DB2 experience.
August 14, 2012 at 8:57 am
Were either or both of these set up by a recruiter? First sounds like confusing data entry with DBA. Second sounds like generic DBA position but they forgot to mention what they wanted specifically. I.e. someone with DB2 experience.
The interviews were few years ago, so I don't remember how they were organized, but in both of them after few questions, I've asked if this is an interview for a SQL Server DBA and the answer in both of them was yes.
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August 16, 2012 at 8:45 am
Earlier this year I had an interview for a gig right next to Swindon station, a dream forty-minute commute compared with the two hours each way I’d been on for months. Two guys interviewed me, both PM’s, one with some SQL dev experience. The SQL questions were trivial, they then switched to the “can you work with us” questions, with a strong focus on discipline. The big one went like this:
S: “I’m M’s boss. I’ve asked you to work on a project exclusively while I’m away for a few days. Two days in, M approaches you with an urgent request for a piece of business-critical work.” The answer I like the most for this one is “Seek the advice of a superior”. I can’t remember what I answered in the interview, but they didn’t like it and I didn’t get the gig.
The guy who did get the gig works right here. He’d worked on it for three weeks – then found out that S & M hadn’t got approval to do the project but had started anyway, and was let go.
For fast, accurate and documented assistance in answering your questions, please read this article.
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August 17, 2012 at 8:38 am
ChrisM@Work (8/16/2012)
Earlier this year I had an interview for a gig right next to Swindon station, a dream forty-minute commute compared with the two hours each way I’d been on for months. Two guys interviewed me, both PM’s, one with some SQL dev experience. The SQL questions were trivial, they then switched to the “can you work with us” questions, with a strong focus on discipline. The big one went like this:S: “I’m M’s boss. I’ve asked you to work on a project exclusively while I’m away for a few days. Two days in, M approaches you with an urgent request for a piece of business-critical work.” The answer I like the most for this one is “Seek the advice of a superior”. I can’t remember what I answered in the interview, but they didn’t like it and I didn’t get the gig.
The guy who did get the gig works right here. He’d worked on it for three weeks – then found out that S & M hadn’t got approval to do the project but had started anyway, and was let go.
If the company involved is also the name of a town in Switzerland - I've had a couple of interviews there - both left me feeling uncomfortable about the staff that that really needed and why I had been selected for an interview.
-------------------------------Posting Data Etiquette - Jeff Moden [/url]Smart way to ask a question
There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand (the world). There is no such thing as a dumb question. ― Carl Sagan
I would never join a club that would allow me as a member - Groucho Marx
August 17, 2012 at 8:46 am
Stuart Davies (8/17/2012)
ChrisM@Work (8/16/2012)
Earlier this year I had an interview for a gig right next to Swindon station, a dream forty-minute commute compared with the two hours each way I’d been on for months. Two guys interviewed me, both PM’s, one with some SQL dev experience. The SQL questions were trivial, they then switched to the “can you work with us” questions, with a strong focus on discipline. The big one went like this:S: “I’m M’s boss. I’ve asked you to work on a project exclusively while I’m away for a few days. Two days in, M approaches you with an urgent request for a piece of business-critical work.” The answer I like the most for this one is “Seek the advice of a superior”. I can’t remember what I answered in the interview, but they didn’t like it and I didn’t get the gig.
The guy who did get the gig works right here. He’d worked on it for three weeks – then found out that S & M hadn’t got approval to do the project but had started anyway, and was let go.
If the company involved is also the name of a town in Switzerland - I've had a couple of interviews there - both left me feeling uncomfortable about the staff that that really needed and why I had been selected for an interview.
That description may have fitted a year or two back Stuart, but not now - at least, not the company I'm thinking of. You were uncomfortable about the staff? From what I remember, they appeared bl00dy miserable - but it was a grim monday morning.
For fast, accurate and documented assistance in answering your questions, please read this article.
Understanding and using APPLY, (I) and (II) Paul White
Hidden RBAR: Triangular Joins / The "Numbers" or "Tally" Table: What it is and how it replaces a loop Jeff Moden
August 17, 2012 at 10:50 am
ChrisM@Work (8/17/2012)
Stuart Davies (8/17/2012)
ChrisM@Work (8/16/2012)
Earlier this year I had an interview for a gig right next to Swindon station, a dream forty-minute commute compared with the two hours each way I’d been on for months. Two guys interviewed me, both PM’s, one with some SQL dev experience. The SQL questions were trivial, they then switched to the “can you work with us” questions, with a strong focus on discipline. The big one went like this:S: “I’m M’s boss. I’ve asked you to work on a project exclusively while I’m away for a few days. Two days in, M approaches you with an urgent request for a piece of business-critical work.” The answer I like the most for this one is “Seek the advice of a superior”. I can’t remember what I answered in the interview, but they didn’t like it and I didn’t get the gig.
The guy who did get the gig works right here. He’d worked on it for three weeks – then found out that S & M hadn’t got approval to do the project but had started anyway, and was let go.
If the company involved is also the name of a town in Switzerland - I've had a couple of interviews there - both left me feeling uncomfortable about the staff that that really needed and why I had been selected for an interview.
That description may have fitted a year or two back Stuart, but not now - at least, not the company I'm thinking of. You were uncomfortable about the staff? From what I remember, they appeared bl00dy miserable - but it was a grim monday morning.
Yup - that sounds about right
-------------------------------Posting Data Etiquette - Jeff Moden [/url]Smart way to ask a question
There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand (the world). There is no such thing as a dumb question. ― Carl Sagan
I would never join a club that would allow me as a member - Groucho Marx
August 20, 2012 at 1:47 am
Stuart Davies (8/17/2012)
ChrisM@Work (8/17/2012)
Stuart Davies (8/17/2012)
ChrisM@Work (8/16/2012)
Earlier this year I had an interview for a gig right next to Swindon station, a dream forty-minute commute compared with the two hours each way I’d been on for months. Two guys interviewed me, both PM’s, one with some SQL dev experience. The SQL questions were trivial, they then switched to the “can you work with us” questions, with a strong focus on discipline. The big one went like this:S: “I’m M’s boss. I’ve asked you to work on a project exclusively while I’m away for a few days. Two days in, M approaches you with an urgent request for a piece of business-critical work.” The answer I like the most for this one is “Seek the advice of a superior”. I can’t remember what I answered in the interview, but they didn’t like it and I didn’t get the gig.
The guy who did get the gig works right here. He’d worked on it for three weeks – then found out that S & M hadn’t got approval to do the project but had started anyway, and was let go.
If the company involved is also the name of a town in Switzerland - I've had a couple of interviews there - both left me feeling uncomfortable about the staff that that really needed and why I had been selected for an interview.
That description may have fitted a year or two back Stuart, but not now - at least, not the company I'm thinking of. You were uncomfortable about the staff? From what I remember, they appeared bl00dy miserable - but it was a grim monday morning.
Yup - that sounds about right
You missed nothing. Swindon and roundabout has some fine companies to contract for - where you're not guessing why you're there or for how long 😉
For fast, accurate and documented assistance in answering your questions, please read this article.
Understanding and using APPLY, (I) and (II) Paul White
Hidden RBAR: Triangular Joins / The "Numbers" or "Tally" Table: What it is and how it replaces a loop Jeff Moden
September 12, 2012 at 6:11 am
GSquared (8/7/2012)
Weirdest interview I ever had was 4 hours long. They flew me out to their city, put me up in the local Hilton, rented a car for me for the day, and took me out to lunch as part of it, but then, during the interview, it went like this:Manager draws some boxes and lines on a whiteboard, tells me it's a diagram of the company firewall and DMZ, and asks me what's wrong with it. I tell him I don't know, I'm a DBA, and don't normally configure firewalls and DMZs. There have always (in my prior jobs) been other people who handled that. He spends the next 15 minutes asking me things like, "so you've never worked for a company with a data-driven web-presence?", and grilling me on firewalls, DMZs, load ballancer and other external security measures, despite my answer to pretty much every question being "I don't know. I'm not familiar with this particular subject."
A while later, after some softball questions about things I could actually answer, their Oracle DBA (they use both products) gets up, draws a diagram on the whiteboard, with backup plans and some basic ETL flows. It was pretty clear that it was missing log backups on key databases, and I expected the question to be something like "what's missing here". Instead it was, "So, we don't do log backups on our mission-critical data. Under what circumstances would that be okay?"
I replied with some options about recovering data from ETL sources, possible use of replication or mirroring instead of PIT-restores, and a few essoteric possibilities that were "out there" a bit, but possible. It turned out the answer they were looking for was "It's okay to lose mission-critical data if you don't have enough disk space for the log backups". That's not really how they worded it, but that's what it boiled down to.
I hope, to this day, they were just trying to get a shock reaction out of me. I think I did stare at him for a few seconds with my eyes a bit wide. I don't think my jaw actually physically hit the floor, but it may have.
(As a note, data is either mission-critical, meaning losing it would critically harm the business, or it's non-mission-critical, and losing it is business-acceptable. Can't be both ways.)
It gets better.
At the end of the interview, as always, I was asked if I had any final questions. Every interview ends that way, right? So I did my usual, and asked, "Am I leaving you with any questions or concerns about my ability to do the job we're talking about here?" The answer was, "Well, you seem pretty arrogant. Have you ever made any friends?"
It gets better.
They made me an offer about 10 minutes later, while I was driving back to the airport to fly back home. A very high-pay offer, and generous moving/relocation expenses.
(I turned them down. Between the weird questions, and some distinctly odd behavior while we were at lunch, they could have offered twice what they did and I still would have turned it down. But definitely an "interesting" interview.)
LOL.... and I thought I've had weird interviews in the past!
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It takes a minimal capacity for rational thought to see that the corporate 'free press' is a structurally irrational and biased, and extremely violent, system of elite propaganda.
David Edwards - Media lens[/url]
Society has varying and conflicting interests; what is called objectivity is the disguise of one of these interests - that of neutrality. But neutrality is a fiction in an unneutral world. There are victims, there are executioners, and there are bystanders... and the 'objectivity' of the bystander calls for inaction while other heads fall.
Howard Zinn
September 12, 2012 at 8:35 am
I was asked to peel an Orange at one of my interviews..
September 12, 2012 at 8:55 am
a_sql (9/12/2012)
I was asked to peel an Orange at one of my interviews..
The ancient Japanese art of Orange-gami:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CVHF0J8XOKM
September 12, 2012 at 9:02 am
Scott Arendt (8/14/2012)
I didn't suggest to accept the job, just to let the interview to finish. You should try to speak with some of the employees or find some references from somewhere else. As they have said, at the end of the interview you can accept or decline the offer.
You could have the best interview in the world, they can show you amazing things but it could be a simple illusion (been there) or it could be the other way around.
Of course, whether I stayed to finish the interview would depend on the circumstances.
Do I need the job? Is this the guy I would be working for? Did the job sound great up until this time?
I have to say that I agree with Scott. I'd have to judge the situation at the time. I don't think there's anything wrong with ending an interview if you've hit a deal breaker. However make sure it is one and ask questions.
I had an all day interview with DoubleClick years ago, literally 6 hours with 4-5 groups of people. That last was the CIO and after he told me everyone was impressed, he noted that I'd asked one of the groups about telecommuting. He wasn't a fan and said he would allow one day a week sometimes. I said that since I lived 60 miles away, that wasn't going to be acceptable, but I'd think about it and let him know, ending the interview. I called back the next day to decline.
Being open honest makes sense to me and it's served me well. If someone were bouncing a ball off a wall, I'd have to say that's distracting and could they stop. If they didn't, regardless of this being a test, I would like let them know that I couldn't concentrate like this and would have to end the interview. Up to them how to respond from there.
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September 12, 2012 at 9:05 am
a_sql (9/12/2012)
I was asked to peel an Orange at one of my interviews..
I have an interview tomorrow with a company not far from where I live. So I thought I'd go and check out my interviewers on LinkedIn. I also checked who's viewed my profile in the last 7 days and that's when I noticed that one of the guys who viewed my profile yesterday is the same guy who interviewed me 4 months ago for a different position with another company! So now he's also working for this new company! AHAHAHAHAHA.... :w00t:
Not sure what to make of it to be honest. He's not one of the interviewers but he must have known that I'm going in for an interview otherwise why would he view my profile!
I got the phone call about the job yesterday afternoon. By the end of the day I had secured an interview. Not a big deal but perhaps a good sign who knows......
BTW, I didn't get that job from 4 months ago. Apparently I was okay technically but HR didn't like me! :doze:
---------------------------------------------------------
It takes a minimal capacity for rational thought to see that the corporate 'free press' is a structurally irrational and biased, and extremely violent, system of elite propaganda.
David Edwards - Media lens[/url]
Society has varying and conflicting interests; what is called objectivity is the disguise of one of these interests - that of neutrality. But neutrality is a fiction in an unneutral world. There are victims, there are executioners, and there are bystanders... and the 'objectivity' of the bystander calls for inaction while other heads fall.
Howard Zinn
September 12, 2012 at 12:54 pm
September 12, 2012 at 2:44 pm
a_sql (9/12/2012)
I was asked to peel an Orange at one of my interviews..
Did you ask for a spoon to make it easier? 😀
My response for such a question would have been the same as if someone asked me to write some code.
Before I do that, let me ask you a couple of questions...
I would have asked what why they thought they wanted the Orange to be peeled and what they were going to do with it once peeled because the amount of Orange zest left on the Orange might be importantant. I would also have asked whether they needed the peel intact or it could be discarded and what made them think so. This would do things like make sure that they understood that they had an Orange and that what they really needed wasn't really a Lime or a Lemon or a BaseBall.
--Jeff Moden
September 13, 2012 at 3:57 am
FunkyDexter (8/9/2012)
I have an unusual interview technique I use which some here might find unreasonable but I'd defend it to the hilt. I get two sets of lego containing exactly the same pieces. I sit in one room with a pretty random shape pre-built out of one set of lego and have the interviewee sit in another room with the other set - connected by hands free telephones. The interviewee can ask any questions they like and they've got 20 minutes to build the shape I pre-built, which is waaay too short a period for them to actually complete the task (it takes alot longer than you might think).
Had a similar test as part of an interview for a support desk job. Bit weird but considering the job, quite valid.
-------------------------------Posting Data Etiquette - Jeff Moden [/url]Smart way to ask a question
There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand (the world). There is no such thing as a dumb question. ― Carl Sagan
I would never join a club that would allow me as a member - Groucho Marx
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