Last week i had a chance to conduct my life’s first interview. The guy was a DBA with 2 years of experience and it was supposed to be a telephonic call. I checked out his CV and wrote down around 8 questions on a paper, just to make sure that i myself don’t get confused during the interview 😉 . So i called him in the evening and started with introduction and his present job profile. Then i started with the questions from the projects he had done. He was confident about the stuff he was handling and replied all the questions honestly, saying NO at points where he didn’t know or was not involved in something. One of such thing was testing the backups. He said there is no testing done as such.
In his CV he had written about Data Guard also. So i asked few data guard questions like what is the difference in working of physical and logical standby ? He was not aware about some of the data types not being supported in logical standby.
Overall he answered the questions pretty confidently and honestly. So at the end, i recommended his induction into the company 🙂
Happy Ending !
BTW from the first experience i can say that it feels good to be on the other side of table (or phone).
sahi hai Sidhu saab
Plz tell me if that guy was finally selected by Higher recruitment management level …
Here i want to see what is the fate of Technically Recommended person at the hands of Non Technical Managers …!!!
@Manikya
I don’t really know what happened later on. Will try to find out whether he was selected or not.
Conducting interviews is such a stressful job!! Most of the times you meet people who don’t even know what CHECKPOINTS are! And fake resumes show up every now and then.. The tragedy is that there are just not enough of good DBAs around and you tend to compromise on the quality of people that are hired!!
@Puja
So, you too familiar with this beast called Oracle 🙂
Yea, it is, indeed. Quality resources are just so rare and if there are a few, companies are not ready to pay what they ask for. Moreover the way Indian companies are going for quantity of resources (Yea, number of employees is a factor 😉 ) the quality is bound to go down.
Fake resumes are also a headache but i guess if the interviewer is OK, one carrying fake CV can’t go far. Will get caught soon in CHECKPOINTS and SCNs 😉
Oh yes, am a big fan of oracle. was working as an Oracle DBA before quitting.
In one of the companies that I worked with, they took fresh graduates, trained them on SQL, and put them to work as DBAs!! I am sure within a year, they would project themselves as ‘experienced’ DBAs! And then if the interviewer is smart, they would get trapped in the vicious world of CHECKPOINTS and SCNs!!
You know what, i would say even thats good that they are at least training them on SQL. I have seen the scenarios where they were not taught anything and still asked to manage databases.
So as you said, after 1-2 years they would be so called “experienced” DBAs with 2 years of ex in this that blah blah. Sad indeed.
This,specially is the case with the Indian companies. I have never seen them doing any skill based recruitment. They keep on adding people and then throw randomly here and there…where few of them become DBAs, others Unix administrators and so on. So jinna gur panuge unna mitha houga anusaar, things get nowhere.
BTW how do you feel after quitting ? Don’t you miss all this ? Any plans in future to join back ?
Well, I am not too sure about that! The way these people land the database (and eventually themselves) in trouble, I wish it would make the recruiters take a little more pain in identifying the right resource..
On a tangential note, my previous company recruited me (an Oracle DBA) while it was a database designer they were looking for!!!
I had quit the job while I was into fourth month of my pregnancy. I had to do so for medical reasons. Ever since then I have enjoyed every single moment of my pregnancy and motherhood, so no regrets whatsoever 🙂 I do miss the technical stuff at times, and wish to resume at some point of time. As of now, I am busy trying to find out work from home options. Any ideas?
Fine, that is an integral part of life.
In India that would be an issue. I am not aware of any such thing as work from home. With database it becomes even more difficult. You must be looking for database stuff only ?
For some programming jobs, i think there could be something.
Would let you know if i come across any information.
man, even I took so many interviews here in my new job for pl-sql developer, Initially I was nervous, but now I am kind of getting hold of it. no one was selected though.
and Puja I liked your blog page, and added your blog to my google reader list of blogs.